London's Burning
by Pollardinator
Summary: When the undead plague strikes the UK, an unlikely group of survivors struggle to stay alive as the dead begin to rise. As the government declares martial law and open war erupts between the British Army and the undead, computer repairman Chris finds himself leader of a ragtag band struggling to stay alive on the blood soaked streets of London as Britain descends into anarchy.
1. Chapter 1- Nightmare

Chris woke up. He'd had a nightmare he couldn't quite remember, he knew it had been recurring over the past few nights, but memories of it eluded him. Feeling feverish, his whole body trembling slightly, Chris glanced at the digital clock on his bedside table, 3AM. He got up and splashed water on his face from the sink in the bathroom.

"Fuck…" He mumbled, the cold water made it feel as though his head was about to explode. Chris turned the light in the bathroom on and as it flickered, he looked into his bloodshot eyes.

"That's the kind of shit that gives me these nightmares."

He'd been feeling even more passive than usual recently, dark thoughts taking over his mind, telling him not to care. Chris staggered out of the bathroom, leaving the light on.

He walked across the hall and took a sharp knife from the small kitchen, then, in front of the mirror, held the knife to his own throat. Chris stared at his reflection, visualising it moving the knife across and spraying blood over the mirror. Part of him wondered if he was worth the effort of suicide, that maybe death might be too much of a reward for him. An escape from the world was more than he felt he deserved. He was a nobody and had nobody that would miss him; even Eliza didn't care about him anymore.

Groaning he shuffled away to put the knife back. He just couldn't be bothered. He fell back onto his bed. More feverish images appeared in his mind: A woman in a gas mask with a gun to her head, pulling the trigger but nothing was happening. The metallic click of the empty chamber was getting louder and more frantic each time. The woman shook her head slowly and screamed. He then saw a group of faceless young children stood around a fire and singing "London's burning", as strange, inhuman figures staggered toward them.

That was all Chris would remember the next morning.


	2. Chapter 2- Rush Hour

"Yo, wake up mate."

Mark sighed and shook Chris' shoulder, and finally he woke up, his face pale.

"Another nightmare lad?" Mark said, laughing but a hint of concern behind the remark. But his friend only shrugged, and Mark sighed. Sometimes he wondered what Chris dreamed about and, recently, from what he could gather, they had taken a more sinister turn.

But with Chris offering no explanation, and merely staring out of the window, Mark absently drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, humming along to some trashy old country western song on the radio. Around them, the morning London traffic honked and roared, the squat white van they sat in stuck behind a large double decker bus, the lights up ahead still red.

As Mark glanced at his wing mirror, he smirked to himself. To an outside observer, he and Chris couldn't have been any different. Chris was short and broad, with a few days' worth of stubble and untidy blonde hair, whereas he was almost the complete opposite, tall and thin, his short brown hair well combed and clean shaven. Personality wise aswell, they were very different. He was an optimist, always smiling and always had a rude joke or witty line to shout out, whereas Chris was a thinker, a bit shy and, of course, had weird dreams.

But they had been friends for far too long for either to even think about leaving the other. Besides, Mark thought, they were business partners. It was only a small business though, the two of them and a van going around London's East End repairing faulty electronics and computers. And, at the moment, they were on the way to a job nearby, a Chinese takeaway having problems with an ancient Apple Mac.

That is, if London traffic didn't stop them first.

The quiet in the van was broken by a faint buzzing, and Chris grabbed his phone from the dashboard, checking it for a second before a look of disappointment crossed his face.

"Excepting someone?" Mark asked, raising an eyebrow.

Chris nodded and sighed.

"Yeah, I was hoping Eliza would call me soon, but I haven't spoken to her for the last few weeks. Shes just refusing to talk to me at the moment."

"Is this about you scaring Paul off?"

"Yeah, but it wasn't like that at all… The guy was a complete dick, just used her for money and leeched off her. I think I'm justified in my role as an older brother to get rid of creeps like that."

Mark smiled sympathetically as the lights finally went green and they slowly drove forward. Keeping his eyes on the road, he said calmly.

"Are you sure you're not straying too far into trying to be her dad? She's twenty five Chris; I think she can look after herself."

Chris didn't answer, just looked down at his phone and Mark realised he had gone too far again. Since the loss of their parents in a car accident seventeen years ago, Chris and his sister Eliza had been pretty much alone except for Mark and some other friends, and since then Chris had had to grow up very quickly to look after his younger sister. Because of that Chris had never really had a proper life, having to always look after his sister whilst everybody else had been out at parties and clubbing during their teenage years. Now that Eliza had finished university she was always out on the town, going around with people, and getting into situations, that Chris wanted to keep her away from. It didn't help matters that there was an eight year age gap between the two siblings.

Mark had tried to keep the peace between the two as best he could, but increasingly it seemed like they were growing too far apart for even a lifelong friend like him to sort out. Sensing Chris' frustration, he quickly changed the subject.

"So, er, who texted you?"

"Just Stan, got another one of his theories going on…"

Mark laughed. Stan Peterson was an old friend of Chris' who had ,since a few years back, developed an almost unhealthy obsession with getting himself ready for 'the coming apocalypse', or, as he liked to call it 'doomsday prepping'. Personally, Mark found the man creepy and obsessive, but he was harmless, mostly.

"Not another one…Last time he was trying to get a building firm to make him a nuclear bunker for the 2012 apocalypse." Mark said with a grin. "You really need to distance yourself from him now; you've got enough problems to deal with besides some nut job hoarder."

"He's alright…" Chris replied weakly, but Mark could tell even he wasn't entirely convinced.

"The man has a freaking crossbow!"

"Maybe he's got a point."

"Or maybe…" Mark began, but Chris quickly shushed him as the opening fanfare of the BBC news came over the radio. Leaving his point unsaid, Mark gripped the steering wheel as a haughty sounding newsreader came on the radio.

"This is the BBC news at eleven o'clock." He began. "Our top story, riots in the East End of London and other major city centres have been on-going for the past two days. In a statement released this morning the Metropolitan police commissioner assured the public the riots are under control, and that the violence is being dealt with by police. He blamed the rioting on government cuts to welfare and an increasing tension between inner city youths and the police. We now go to our correspondent…"

"See…" Chris said triumphantly, perking up slightly. "This is what Stan was telling me about. Whenever shits about to go down, theres always rioting beforehand. The man has a point Mark."

His friend only laughed though.

"Look Chris, there is nothing happening that's going to validate Stan's ramblings. The only apocalypse we have to worry about is one angry customer after we roll up an hour later than we said…"


	3. Chapter 3- First Encounter

The house they pulled up to was striking from the very beginning. It was a bright day, but even the sun seemed to recoil in fear from the old house they had been called to. Chris and Mark had returned from the Chinese restaurant with the faulty computer only to remember their next customer. They were going to help an old man who had called them the day before.

"I bet that dinosaur hasn't even plugged it in." Mark had joked when they had received the call.

The house was small and decrepit, falling apart at the seams. Chris felt a sense of fear come over him, although he wasn't entirely sure what kind of threat he could possibly face in there. Maybe Stan's paranoia had got to him. Knocking on the large wooden door of the house, Chris watched as flakes of black paint fell to the ground as he did so. The house was mostly wooden, with faded bricks and concrete that had been stained a dark grey from the countless years of air pollution from the many cars around London's East End. Chris got no response and decided to turn the door's handle in the hope that it was unlocked. He was right. The door creaked open, and that's when the smell hit him. It smelled of death and decay. It was not a smell Chris was altogether familiar with, but he recognised it nonetheless. Mark strolled up beside him after answering a call and held his nose.

"Jesus, what the fuck is that?" Mark asked with a disgusted laugh.

"I don't know." Chris replied, absently.

"Maybe the old man farted himself to death. Fucking hell." Mark joked, coughing in between his sentences.

Chris walked in and the house creaked loudly, as if it was shrieking at him. The sound made Mark jump and Chris laughed, relieved by Mark's reaction. They were both as scared as each other. Chris opened the door to the living room and found the old man slouched on a worn leather sofa. The man looked more dead than alive; his skin was only just stretched across his skeleton. His skin was paper-thin and had a yellowish colour to it. The man was completely emaciated and couldn't make any sound besides a groan. Chris pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled 999.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mark asked.

Chris moved the phone away from his mouth.

"Look at him! He has bigger issues than a faulty computer or an antique mobile phone that doesn't work anymore!" He hissed at Mark. Mark nodded. Chris called for the ambulance.

The old man was dead long before the ambulance arrived at the house. Before he had died, the old man pointed a long bony finger at Chris and tried to say something. Only unintelligible gasps came out, and the old man rolled his eyes and died.


	4. Chapter 4- The Cover Up

The next day, and the Houses of Parliament, seat of the government for centuries, was seemingly unaffected by current events. Outside the ancient palace, the roar of London traffic and babble of crowds of tourists continued anew. The only sign of any tension from the riots currently blighting the East End were a small squad of armed police near the entrance and the whir of a police helicopter nearby.

And for most of the politicians, officials and leaders within Parliament, life was normal.

But for one man, life had taken a more sinister turn.

He was the Health Minister, Harold Douglas, a young political 'newbie' as many of his Cabinet colleagues called him, and currently he was walking through the corridors of power within the old building, a thick wad of files under his arm, on the way to an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister himself.

As he walked along the wood panelled corridor, passing groups of MP's and civil servants, some waving absently as he walked past, whilst others cast distrustful glares. Any other day he would have stopped to talk to some of them, or debate some current issue. But now was the time for more pressing matters, he thought, as he came to the door of the Prime Minister's temporary office and knocked on the polished oak wood.

Normally he would be meeting with the Prime Minister in Downing Street, but the riots had convinced him and the rest of the Cabinet to temporarily move their offices to Westminster until the current problems were over. But, if what Harold had in his files was true, those problems would be nothing compared to what was coming.

"Come in." came the voice of the Prime Minister, and, taking a deep breath, Harold opened the door and stepped inside.

The Prime Minister smiled broadly as Harold walked in, looking over the top of his glasses from a report he was reading.

"Ah, Mr Douglas, I believe you wanted to see me?"

The Health Minister nodded slowly, nervously straightening his tie and looking round the room absently before replying.

The office was luxuriously decked out in oak wood panelling, a roaring fire in a marble fireplace opposite the Prime Minister's large polished desk, and a crimson carpet covered the floor in a wash of dark red.

"Yes, of course…" Harold began nervously. He had never been a good public speaker, and had been surprised at his promotion to the Cabinet after the last reshuffle.

"And what was it you were wanting to say?" said the Prime Minister, smiling again and motioning for Harold to sit down at the chair opposite him. "Actually maybe you want a drink first?"

Harold shook his head.

"Sorry sir, I don't drink. But yes, I have something important to show you."

Opening the largest of the files in his lap, he picked out a sheet of paper and passed it to the veteran politician opposite.

"This is a report from an NHS unit in East London about an incident at one of their hospitals…I know it seems farfetched but I think we may need to take action soon."

But the Prime Minister was quiet as he read the report quickly, before asking politely.

"So it's all true then? This is all true? That people are…coming back?"

The Health Minister took a deep breath.

"Yes, unfortunately it's all true. The patient in question, an old man, did…return, and attacked several staff before he was sedated."

The Prime Minister nodded slowly.

"What happened to those he attacked? The ones who were…bitten?"

"Immediate quarantine, the hospital didn't want to take any chances with whatever he had. The guess at the time was some sort of rabies, until the deaths of course…."

"Is that when the…reanimation began?"

Harold bowed his head solemnly.

"That was when the first ones began to come back, a few hours after. Sir, I have to advise you to take some action upon this, it could be happening all over the country for all we know."

The Prime Minister was silent for a few minutes, then finally stood up and looked out the window, before saying.

"Let me see those files again"

Harold nervously passed the thick wad of paper over, waiting for the politician's response. But it never came. In one swift, decisive movement, the Prime Minister looked over the front page of the files one more time, and then hurled them into the open fireplace, where they began to crackle and disintegrate into black ash.

"What…" Harold began, but he was quickly silenced as his leader sat down opposite him again and said calmly but firmly.

"Harold, this meeting never happened."

"But…"

This time the politicians tone was slightly harder and less polite.

"As I said, this never happened. And if you wish to keep your post I suggest you don't say otherwise."

Now it was Harold's turn to become angry.

"Sir, I respect that you think this is for the best, but we cannot ignore these reports. And if we don't heed the warnings, it could happen again."

The Prime Minister remained calm.

"I'm sorry but these…stories aren't the sort of thing we should be telling the public at large. Can you imagine the headlines? The panic? The BBC enquiry? Look, Harold, I've been in this game for long enough to realise that it is the status quo of the country that people want. They want the trains to run on time, their taxes to be used wisely, their lives free from worry and responsibility. And, most of all, the public want to sleep safe in their beds knowing that we, the government, will keep them safe. They don't want horror stories about people not staying dead! It's an election year, you understand, and I can't be seen as the leader who started mass panic over some crazy stories!"

Harold's reply was weak and unsure, the Prime Minister staring at him the whole time.

"But, sir, surely we can put measures in place? Put some more police out there, go to these hospitals and sort things out, deploy some soldiers out on the streets even! Just in case…"

The Prime Minister only smirked.

"Really Harold? You, the bloody Minister for Health, is saying we should put soldiers on the streets of this country, all because of a story that hospital just cooked up so we would give them more money we don't have? Do you know how much it costs to put boots on the ground in this country, to put men in uniform with guns out there amongst the public? It's bad enough when it's some Middle East dustbowl or African dictatorship, but what will people think when they see soldiers and tanks rolling down Oxford Street and round Piccadilly Circus?"

Harold was about to say something back, but stopped himself, and the Prime Minister sensed his indecisiveness and pressed on at him.

"See? You see why I'm not causing mass panic in the country? Look, in a few years' time, maybe after the elction, we might tell the papers there was an incident at a hospital a few years back, and we'll all laugh, but not now… As I said, this meeting never happened Mr Douglas."

And with that he motioned towards the door and, with a sense of foreboding at what he had just witnessed, Harold left the room.

As he closed the door behind him, he was surprised to see the Home Secretary by the door, a frown on his pale features.

"You heard it all didn't you?" Harold said with a defeated sigh.

"Of course…" the Home Secretary began, before coughing loudly into a tissue in his hand. "And frankly I think that actually, you've got a point lad…"

But as he said this he coughed once more into his tissue, louder this time and Harold was sure he saw a spot of red on the crisp white.

"Are…are you alright?" he asked, a hit of concern in his voice.

"Couldn't be better old boy, just a little cough, I'll be fine by the debate tomorrow." Laughed the old man "And, if you need any help with getting the truth out, I'll see you after the big Commons debate. From what you were saying, this is bad and, this time tomorrow we can raise it at the next Cabinet meeting, try and put the old Prime Minister in his place..." he added quietly, winking at Harold as he stepped into the office beyond.

"Well." Harold thought to himself as he walked away. "At least someone believes me…"


	5. Chapter 5- Urban Chaos

Chris was fed up. He'd just suffered through a day of Stan and his conspiracy theory bullshit. This time he was saying something about genetic experiments and biological weaponry. Chris wasn't really listening but he was pretty sure he'd heard Stan say something about trying to unlock the secret to immortality and unleashing a horrible disease as a weapon. Ravings of a madman, Chris thought. That hadn't been the worst of it: Stan had decided to give Chris a gun, a silver semi-automatic pistol. Chris didn't know anything of the model, and stranger yet neither did Stan. Chris took the gun; it would be easier to explain to the police than it would be to argue with Stan's bullshit, he thought with a laugh.

Chris went into the local bar later, having left the pistol under his seat in his van, and sat on a bar stool. It had been a long day and he needed a drink. His sister faced him from behind the counter,and Chris hoped she had forgiven him for the whole Paul thing.

"Hi. What can I get you?" Eliza asked him, as if he was just another customer.

"Something strong." Chris laughed.

"Tough day?" Eliza asked, her straight face cracking into a slight smile.

"I thought you weren't working today?" Chris asked, as he nodded his answer to Eliza's question.

"Mel's off, some sort of flu, I think. I'm covering her shift. I can't argue with some extra money." She said.

"Look, I'm sorry. I was a dick, but I'm your older brother, I'm just trying to look out for you because I don't trust anyone else to." Chris said. Eliza noticed the guilt in his voice and felt like grinning. Instead she shrugged.

"No worries. He was an arsehole anyway. A damn sexy one, but an arsehole all the same." She said, laughing.

Chris' frown broke into a grin. As Eliza poured him a glass of whiskey, Chris noticed a man further down the bar leaning over slightly to glimpse her body as she bent over. As Eliza stood up and placed Chris' glass on the counter, the man leered at her. Chris didn't like it, but he didn't blame the sad alcoholic with pale skin and greying hair. Everyone knew Eliza was absolutely gorgeous and didn't hesitate to say it. Chris understood, he supposed, she was tall and quite skinny, with shoulder length brown hair and curves in all the right places. Or so he was told by Mark, whose jaw would drop so far it wouldn't have been a surprise if it detached from the rest of him and left a crater in the ground every time he set eyes upon her. Somehow, Chris didn't mind when Mark looked at her so much, it seemed as though he wasn't just objectifying her as all the other men did, instead genuinely appreciating her beauty. Then again, Chris remembered the way Mark had looked at her when she had admitted she was bisexual, but if it had been anyone else as equally attractive Chris reckoned he'd probably have the same reaction.

He had been sad to see Eliza drop out of university though, she'd been studying law, God knows why, but she couldn't be bothered with most of the work. Chris had accepted it by now, but there were days he wished he could see her working magic in a courtroom as opposed to having perverts stare at her arse every time she bent over. But in the same way, he knew she wouldn't have fitted in with the prissy lawyers with a taste for human misery, everyone seemed to hate lawyers the most, second only to bankers and politicians for the world's most hated people. And Eliza wasn't the sort of person anyone could bring themselves to hate unless they were jealous of her looks and popularity. And of course, there were plenty of those kinds of people, but they never bothered her.

"If they're jealous of me, I can't help it. It's their own fault that they don't feel good enough." Eliza would say. She was the kind of person who was never put down by the world, no matter how badly it treated her, a lot like Mark in a way. And having taken away her parents, forced her into a job where she got stared at by perverts for the paltry amount of money she earned, the world hadn't always been nice to her.

"I'd be less objectified if I worked in a strip club." Eliza would often joke.

Eliza wasn't much like Chris; she was beautiful, young, confident and optimistic where Chris was short, overweight, depressed and beginning to age, his mess of sandy blonde hair was starting to recede and turn grey. Chris sipped at his whiskey absently while Eliza spoke. She stopped and looked at him and he realised that she'd asked him something.

"You weren't listening to anything I just said, were you?" She asked, smiling at Chris' dopiness.

"Umm, something about Ashley fancying Lauren whose brother you're dating?" Chris guessed.

Eliza laughed.

"Not quite. Although I have been sleeping with Lauren since Paul and I broke up." She said with a smug grin.

"Right. So my sister's been sleeping with more women than I have… I'm definitely doing something wrong." Chris joked. He loved hearing Eliza laugh; it proved that for whatever reason, she did still love him. As an older brother, Chris felt that sometimes he was too harsh to her. That he'd screwed it up and pushed her away. God, he hated himself sometimes. Chris finished his whiskey, paid and slipped Eliza a very generous tip of 20 pounds.

"Will you be ok?" Eliza asked him.

"Yeah, it's not that far to walk from here, and I don't want to get Mark to bring the van round from his place." Chris said. Everyone found it strange that Chris was happy to walk around London, when everyone else had to take the car just to get down the road. Eliza kissed him on the cheek and hugged him whispering in his ear.

"I'll set you up with one of my friends soon, if you want."

The man across the bar was still leering at his sister's body as Chris walked out.

Chris reflected on what Eliza had told him. He wasn't ready for a relationship, and he wasn't attractive or young enough for casual sex anymore. He'd tried both before, neither worked. He just couldn't relate to most people, he couldn't connect no matter how much he tried to force it to work. He was too shy to drive a relationship and if the other person took charge they scared him off too soon. He didn't know what was wrong with him, but he just couldn't make connections. Maybe that was why he was such a loser, he thought.

The wind had an unusually cold bite to it, considering it was April. Chris shook a little with the cold and breathed on his hands to warm them. He saw a soft orange glow in the distance. Paying attention to his surroundings now, he made eye contact with a man of about 20, wearing a bandana over most of his face, who winked at him before sprinting down the road towards the orange glow. Chris had to pass it to get home, and he'd worked out what it was. It was going to be a long night…

He knew exactly what the orange glow was now. A car. Or at least, a burning husk of metal that used to be a car. He heard shouts from the rioters, the standard 'Fuck the police!' and 'You're all Nazi's!' Chris looked around for some alleyway he could pass through to get home but ended up having to push his way through the group of rioters and slowly make his way towards the front. Looking Behind him he saw a sea of people in masks, balaclavas or various other accessories covering their faces. He saw someone pull a petrol bomb and throw it at the side of a small shop for no reason, his mates laughing and slapping him on the back as smoke billowed out.

In a weird way Chris agreed with the initial reason for the riots. It was a demonstration against the corruption and lies of the government, originally peaceful with only political motivation. But it seemed that as time went on, it had just become an excuse for thugs to smash shit up. Again. The riot police were way out of their depth, falling back as a single punk with a brick stepped forward and pretended to throw it at them. Chris almost wanted to laugh at how pathetic the policemen in full riot gear were acting. It almost made him want to tap into his angst from his younger years and join in.

It took Chris two more hours to push through the endless sea of rioters and riot police, but he made it home. He'd had no idea that the riots had moved this close to where he lived. He could almost see it from his window. He looked at his phone to see a text from Eliza.

"Hope you're ok. I just saw where the riots are on the news. Let me know when you get home."

He rattled off a quick reply, threw his phone on his bedside table and fell asleep within minutes.


	6. Chapter 6- The Corridor's of Power

Parliament that morning seemed…different, to Harold. There was none of the old friendly rivalries and debates that had once gone on within its hallowed halls, replaced instead by quiet whispering in corners and hushed silences in corridors. The press however, were out there right now, practically besieging the public areas around ambushing any officials of MPs with cameras, notepads and microphones.

This morning Harold was walking briskly towards the main chamber of the House of Commons, hoping to slip into the room unnoticed. He was late, by about twenty minutes already, mainly because of having to make a detour due to wreckage and debris on the roads around from the riots last night. Although the riots seemed to have mostly been confined to the East End, already they were happening sporadically across the capital, and Harold had noticed a large contingent of armoured police vans and riot police on all the roads and entrances to Westminster, in a vain attempt to spare Parliament from the violence beginning to blight the rest of the city.

"Shit." He muttered under his breath as he checked his watch. Now he was twenty five minutes late. He just hoped that the Prime Minister had forgotten their little conversation yesterday, or else the Cabinet meeting later today could be very awkward.

Taking a deep breath as he came to the double doors into the main Commons chamber, he flashed his ID badge at the armed policemen at the entrance.

"Bit late sonny?" one of them laughed as he looked at the sweating and unkempt politician before him.

"Sorry, riots and all…" Harold spluttered, panting slightly.

"Bloody punks." The other officer said grimly. "Just wish our boys could do more to get rid of them. Anyway, go on in."

Thanking the two men, Harold sighed, and then pushed open the doors.

But any chance of sneaking in unnoticed was lost as he heard a patronising sneer from the leader of the opposition, leaning on his dispatch box casually, and a smirk on his face.

"Ah, it seems our right honourable friend Mr Douglas has finally turned up for this question session. May I remind you this is a three line whip? Wouldn't want to let your party down, would you?"

This was greeted by a roar of laughter from the opposition side of the house, and Harold felt his cheeks redden, and earned a glare from the Prime Minister as he took a seat alongside the Home Secretary, who looked even paler and worse for wear than he had last time he saw him, but still smiled and whispered to him.

"Chin up lad, it's only another two hours before its over. Wake me up when they're finished…"

And with that the Home Secretary closed his eyes, a contented smile on his face, took a deep breath and was silent.

Harold wished he could sleep as well, but, as the debate dragged on, he realised that wasn't happening. After an almost thirty minute polite insult match between the Transport and Shadow Transport Secretary's over a new high speed rail link system, the time came for the real issue of the day. The riots.

It was brought up by the Leader of the Opposition, who said mockingly to the Prime Minister.

"So, I would like to bring it your attention, my right honourable friend, that this city is tearing itself apart in pointless riots and violence. And what is your government doing about this? Where is the new equipment you promised our police in your speech a few weeks ago? Where is the tear gas? The water cannons? Why did one of your aides mention deploying the army? Have you lost all control over this country?"

Harold didn't hear the Prime Minister's remark, although he presumed it to be some cutting political statement, but he now seemed to have bigger problems to deal with. The Home Secretary had just woken up, but there was something not right about him.

Gone was the jovial, well-meaning smile and dimples in his fat cheeks, replaced instead by horrifically dilated eyes and deathly pale skin. For a second, the old man looked about for a second, as if he had forgotten where he was, and Harold rolled his eyes and poked him to try and get his attention. Instantly he recoiled in horror.

The man's skin was ice cold.

And then the Home Secretary drew his cracked grey lips back, stared at Harold and snarled, a low animalistic growl, then leered forward, his jaws opening to reveal perfectly white teeth, but drawn back as if about to bite down on the quivering Health Secretary.

Shuffling back along the green leather bench, Harold found his escape blocked by the broad form of the Defence Secretary, a former SAS sergeant and the sort of man Harold did not want to piss off.

He was rescued, however, by the Prime Minister of all people, who called out to the Home Secretary, his voice calm and friendly, but an undertone of anger behind it.

"Home Secretary, may I ask you to answer my right honourable friend's question on the current state of policing within London?"

Instantly the Home Secretary's head snapped around, and he stumbled away from Harold, who breathed a silent sigh of relief, wondering what weird change had come over his old friend. But any chance of the political returning to his normal self was gone as he shambled across to the Prime Minister, leaned across, and bit him, tearing a chunk out of his neck.

"Fuck!" came the shout of one of the MP's, and then the chamber descended into chaos, men and women standing up and running for the door as the PM lay on the carpet, blood pumping out from his neck wound. Two MP's ran forward to try and restrain the Home Secretary, who was already on top of the screaming politician, clawing at him and trying to bite him again as his victim tried to fight him off. Both men were thrown back however, and the two were savaged by the shambling man, who bit them both before lunging at the Prime Minister once more.

Harold could see no one was doing anything, even the burly Defence Secretary was making for the door, currently the site of a huge crush of men and women trying to push outwards. As he watched the Opposition leader was trampled beneath his Shadow Cabinet, howling as a stiletto from the Shadow Environment Secretary pierced his hand. Stumbling out of his seat, and trying to avoid the rampaging Home Secretary, who was currently chasing the Speaker and his deputies across the room, Harold ran over to try and help up the screaming Opposition leader up.

He was suddenly confronted by the Home Secretary, who broke off from his chase, a bloody piece of black robe, with some flesh attached, clinging to his teeth, stood in front of the terrified politician and snarled, his pale eyes gazing directly at Harold.

The next thing he knew, the thing lunged forward, and Harold dodged on impulse, and, far from being the badass action hero combat roll he had expected, instead he slammed straight into the huge wooden Table of the House in the centre of the room. Crying out in pain, he crumpled into an unceremonious heap as the heavy oak table toppled and cracked as it struck the floor, the books, dispatch boxes and other ceremonial items all falling around Harold, who covered his head, hoping his head wouldn't get split open by some ritual tome or one of the dispatch boxes.

As the cannibalistic Home Secretary stumbled toward him, Harold quickly searched for some sort of weapon to fend him off, maybe buy enough time for some armed police to run in and shoot the crazed politician to pieces. Then he saw it. Lying in amongst all the now useless books and other items on the carpet lay one thing that Harold guessed he could actually use.

The ceremonial mace.

Grinning he dived towards it, standing up and hefting the heavy gold plated mace, hoping it was still good at its original purpose, not just traditional ceremonies. In the seconds as the crazed Home Secretary continued to advance at a slow stumble, Harold hoped that he wasn't going to be arrested for handling the ancient mace, or for the action he was planning to use it for.

But then there was no time to think as the Home Secretary lurched at him, arms outstretched and, taking a deep breath, Harold swung. The blow was right on target, and there was a sickening crack as the elderly politicians skull was caved in, blood spurting out and staining the golden tip of the mace in a burst of crimson.

As the Home Secretary fell to the ground, unmoving, Harold hefted the mace in both hands, seeing the dark forms of a squad of armed police shoving through the crowd, and emerging next to the dead politician as paramedics ran to the fallen MP's around the room. The sergeant at their head was silent as his men aimed their submachine guns at the corpse, and only nodded at the shaken Health Minister. Harold however, was looking around the room as MP's began to stare at him, stopping in their tracks when they saw the corpse in the chamber, and Harold standing over it, bloodstained mace in hand. Breathing heavily and licking his dry lips, Harold spoke softly, yet every person in the room hung onto his every word.

"The House will now come to order."


	7. Chapter 7- Date Night

Chris hadn't had the nightmares for a few nights now and he would have been feeling happy, but he was nervous and he knew they'd come back eventually. At the moment he was nervous because he was going on a date. Eliza had set him up with a friend of hers, Hannah. Hannah was way too pretty to be going on a date with someone like Chris, but for some reason, she had agreed to go. Chris was extremely confused as to why, but he didn't question it. He was set to meet her in a restaurant in about half an hour, and he left his apartment at about six to walk to the restaurant, it wasn't far and he didn't want to risk driving as he'd already been drinking. As he walked he noticed a weird silence across the dark city, the distant scream of sirens elsewhere, and, as he strolled down the empty street, he was sure he heard a faint, inhuman moan in the distance.

Chris' hands trembled with anxiety as he opened the door, he didn't really know why he was so nervous about it, he'd met Hannah the day before and they'd been good together, by the time they parted ways she'd already been hanging off his arm. Chris was extremely confused by pretty much everything to do with Hannah and her apparent interest in him, but he wasn't exactly complaining. It was now much colder out than it had been a few days before. English weather, Chris thought, shaking his head with a slight laugh.

Chris eventually arrived at the restaurant and sat at the table he had booked. He looked around and saw various young couples or handsome, rich businessmen trying to simultaneously impress and piss off the woman accompanying them. In many ways he felt a little out of place here, mainly the fact he was just wearing a casual white shirt and jeans, whereas everyone here was decked out in formalwear and suits. Even so Chris liked the atmosphere around the place, smooth jazz music playing quietly in the background whilst every table was decorated with some candles and a vase of flowers.

Hannah arrived half an hour late, her long blonde hair was in a state of disarray and the elegant black dress she had been wearing was torn to the point of it being rags draped over her skin, revealing a great amount of blood covered flesh. Chris stood up and rushed to her as she very nearly collapsed, earning looks of horror from other patrons. As he held her up Hannah gave up trying to hold herself upright and drooped over Chris' arm. She seemed a little light headed as she giggled and planted a kiss on his cheek. Chris wiped the blood that Hannah had now smeared on the side of his face with his free hand.

"Sorry I'm late." She said, calmly.

"Hannah, what the hell happened?" Chris asked, aware that every person in the restaurant had stopped and begun to stare at Hannah.

Hannah raised an eyebrow at him, as if his question was odd. Then she looked down at herself.

"Oh, yeah, some homeless guy along the way. He kind of…and this is the funny part, he kind of, like…. attacked me on the way here. I think he bit me…S-sorry I'm so late" She said, still keeping a disturbingly calm composure.

Chris dragged her to the table, pulled a chair back and placed her on it.

Hannah squirmed as Chris moved to demand off a wet cloth and some bandages off a nearby, pale faced waiter, and what was left of her dress simply fell off. Now Hannah was just wearing blood-stained lingerie. Hannah looked down at herself.

"Damn. This was my best set. I was hoping you wouldn't have to see it until later." She giggled. Chris came back with the cloth and bandages, he only knew simple first aid, but at least it was something. Chris realised her mental state was probably due to the shock and blood loss. And he had already noticed the smell of alcohol on her breath. He cleaned her up with the cloth and observed that there was not just one bite, but several, he counted about three. He bandaged them quickly. Every man in the room was still staring at Hannah, mostly now for her amazing body as opposed to the drama that had been initially attracting attention. Chris pulled out his phone and tried to dial for an ambulance. The line just beeping, as if it was busy. Chris hung the phone up and put it back in his pocket. Hannah sighed and closed her eyes. Chris looked at her; she didn't seem to be breathing.

"She's dead! She's fucking dead!" Someone shouted, and that's when people started screaming.

Everyone turned to look now. Chris was knelt by the chair that Hannah's lifeless body was resting on, shocked and hollow.

A body threw itself against the glass of the front window. Another crack of bone and glass drew the attention of everyone in the room.

"Fucking rioters!" snarled a portly businessman with some red haired girl half his age, and he confidently swaggered up to the window and peered out.

That's when the glass cracked.

With a smash and animalistic snarls, a horde of inhuman creatures descended on those in the restaurant, pinning down and feasting on the living people. Chris bolted for the kitchen, aware that most places had a side exit. He heard the screams of people being eaten alive, a snapping sound as one of the things cracked a man's ribcage open and feasted on his innards. As he ran, he took a large knife by the sink and kicked the door open, staggering into the street outside.

As he looked out he saw a scene of devastation.

All around him rioters and police alike were being attacked by the things in a brutal melee. At a passing glance, the creatures were exactly human in form, but far too violent and brutal to be human. Chris watched in horror as a balaclava thug with a lit petrol bomb was literally torn limb from limb, the bomb falling to the ground and exploding as he burnt to death, setting fire to the wooden exterior of an old newsagents. The fire spread and an office block was starting to go up in flames, these horrific creatures and their poor victims alike throwing themselves out of the window. Chris saw one of the creatures fall from a great height, breaking almost every single bone in its body and begin to crawl towards a police officer who was firing his rifle at another one of the creatures, and bite into his ankle. The policeman fell and the creature he had been shooting continued towards him, tearing at his skin with clumsy flailing of its arms. He started running in the opposite direction, hearing the shambling movement of some of the things following him, as well as running feet, police and rioters alike rushing past him to escape, many covered in bite marks and patches of blood.

Chris pulled his phone from his pocket, stumbling as two police officers carrying their screaming comrade between them shoved past, and rang Eliza.

"Eliza. Are you safe?" Chris asked, out of breath.

"Yeah, of course. I'm at the bar. Everything's fine." She said.

"No. It really isn't." Chris struggled to say, feeling as if he were about to vomit.

"What's wrong?" Eliza asked, fear beginning to show in her voice.

"Things are fucked. Put the news on." Chris said.

There was silence.

"Eliza?" Chris asked, worried.

"Holy fucking shit." Eliza said.

"I'm scared, Chris." She said.

"Me too." Chris said

"Where's Hannah?" Eliza asked.

"She's dead." Chris choked.

He heard Eliza sob.

"No. She isn't." Eliza said.

"What?" Chris asked.

"They're saying that when these things bite you, you die and come back as one of them." Eliza said, her voice shaking.

"Fuck…"

"Yeah."

Chris looked at the massive number of dead shambling down the street towards him and the others running. He had to move. Now.

"I have to move, these things are everywhere. I'll call you later. Stay safe, block the place up." Chris said.

Chris ran for his house and dialled Mark.

"Hey, bad time, mate." Mark said, between heavy breaths.

Chris heard a loud bang as a building nearby went up in a column of smoke.

"Fuck."

"Are you in the van?"

"Yeah."

"Drive it to my place. Now. I'll see you there." Chris said, hanging up.

Chris tried the handle of his door, remembering he locked it. He saw a creature coming out of the alley close to him, noticing for a second it was wearing a military uniform, but had not time to think further as it lunged toward him. He threw himself against the door and it opened, and he slammed the door shut behind him, the creature outside hammering its fists against the thin wood.

He ran into his room, grabbed a bag and took the pistol from under his bed. Stan had taken the liberty of coming by yesterday and leaving a holster and some more ammo for the weapon, and, despite the craziness of it, Chris had agreed to it. He would have called Stan, if Stan had owned a phone. They'd just have to go back to Stan's place once he and Mark found Eliza. Strapped the holster around his waist, he stuck a spare magazine in the side and put the rest in the small front pocket of his backpack. Chris thought about what he might need to take with him. He found several packs of batteries he had bought on the cheap a long time ago, a torch, food and a great deal of alcohol. He didn't want it all to go to waste. As he went through the living room he found a photo of Hannah that Eliza had emailed him before they'd met. Chris had printed a small copy of it, which he'd left on the sofa. Looking at it with a sad smile he put it in his wallet. He had a feeling the wallet wouldn't be useful for much anymore, but he kept it anyway. Chris also found a Swiss army knife by his bed and even a crowbar, shoved behind the boiler by some previous resident. Stuffing these and various other things from around the apartment into the backpack he saw the lights of the van pull up outside his window.

Chris ran out to the van and jumped in the passenger seat.

"Let's go to the bar. Eliza's waiting." Chris said.

Mark nodded a faraway look in his eye before asking.

"Then what's the plan?"

"Go by Stan's. Seemed like the crazy motherfucker was right this whole time." Chris laughed at the irony of it all.

"Who knew?" Mark said, putting the van into gear.

"Long term, I reckon we build a group up. Survive. Get to a port; get the hell out of here."

Mark nodded.

"Fuck. Your deep thinking has actually pulled through for once." Mark joked.

Chris laughed.

They pulled up by the bar. Chris knocked on the front door.

"Eliza! It's me. Can you let us in?" Chris shouted.

He didn't hear a response, but heard the sound of tables being moved and the door was thrown open. Chris hugged Eliza the very second the door fully opened.

"Let's go." Chris said, hoping he sounded confident and in control when he was anything but.

Eliza nodded.

"Lauren, babe, let's go." Eliza said.

Lauren was huddled in a corner, tears streaming down her face, her long black hair in a mess and her makeup running in an ugly smear from the tears.

Eliza held Lauren close to her.

"And we're not discussing this. Lauren's coming with me. I'm in love with her." Eliza said, ready for a fight.

"No. We're not discussing this." Chris replied, opening the back of the van.

Eliza smiled at him.

Chris spotted a group descending upon a creature down the street, beating at it with cricket bats and iron pipes. Chris moved to get a closer look, still keeping his distance, hand on the gun at his hip. One of the men was beating at its torso; it kept getting up although its internal organs would have been beaten to a pulp by now. Another of them went for its head repeatedly and the creature fell, its brains and fragments of skull splattering the pavement, but it didn't get up again. Chris had observed how to kill them. Go for the head. He nodded and went to the van again.

"Mate, what the fuck?" Mark asked, having just seen the gory end of the thing.

"I've worked out how to kill them." Chris said triumphantly, a mad grin on his face.

"Well?" Mark asked again after a short silence.

"Go for the head. I think you need to destroy the brain."

Mark nodded.  
"Destroy the brain. Right. Let's get the fuck out of here." Mark said.


	8. Chapter 8- Conspiracies and Crossbows

It took them at least three hours to reach Stan's house, and by then the already dwindling light had faded to an inky blackness. The street lights were still on, but Mark didn't know how long they would last, considering the current circumstances. Whilst they drove, there had been no conversation, each of the four people within the cramped van lost within their own thoughts, or still silently reliving the horrific events of the last few hours. For Mark however, he was living a more private hell. Somewhere out there, in amongst the hordes of monsters now shambling across the East End, he was out there. Thomas Hall.

His son.

He was only a little boy, barely five years old, and Mark wanted more than anything in the world to have Thomas in his arms once again, to try and protect him from those things out there. But Mark hadn't seen him for a few weeks now, his ex-wife had seen to that. Sandra was a real bitch like that, and since their separation a few years ago he had been relegated to a bystander to Thomas' childhood, with the odd day trip every few weeks to try and bond with a son that merely saw him as just another adult in his life.

His thoughts tailed off as Stan's house became visible up ahead in the weak light from the van's headlights. It was actually surprisingly ordinary, Mark thought. He half excepted Chris' crazy friend to live in a nuclear bunker or a caravan, not some big red brick Victorian house, which, considering the fact Stan didn't seem to have any job beyond posting weird videos on YouTube and trawling through Internet forums, was actually quite impressive.

As he parked the van at the side of the empty street, quickly glancing around to make nobody else was walking, or shambling, around. Mark stepped out of the van, Chris quickly following suit, although slightly slower. Instantly Chris was pointing his gun in all directions, holding it one handed until Mark gently but firmly made him steady it in both. Mark wasn't a gun nut by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew a bit ,and by looking at the stainless steel pistol knew it was a Browning High Power, the sort of gun only police and gangs carried, so how exactly Chris had got hold of one he didn't know.

By now they had reached the door, a heavy oak edifice, which Mark guessed would probably have about ten locks on it. The girls had firmly decided to stay in the van, and he couldn't blame them. There was something about this house he didn't like.

"Alright, it's locked." Chris declared finally, after trying the door for what felt like the tenth time, holstering his pistol and grabbing the short handled crowbar stuck in his belt. However Mark was quick to grab it from his friend's hands.

"Whoa, calm down Gordon Freeman!" he laughed as he prised it from Chris' fingers. "Let the master have a go…"

Chris grinned.

"As if you know any more about breaking into houses than I do."

Mark shrugged.

"I've been locked out before."

And with that he quickly went to work on the heavy iron hinges on the right side of the door, trying desperately to prise them off.

"Watch the road will you?" he said in between heavy gasps for breath. It was proving harder than it looked to get inside Stan's fortress.

"Why me?" Chris said. "I think I made more progress on the door than you did."

"As if!" Mark replied with a grin. "What was your method exactly? Knocking politely and ringing the doorbell. Anyway you're the guy with the gun. My only weapon's this piece of crap and a charming manner."

And with that he turned back to the door, this time trying to loosen the bolts on the hinges, whilist Chris sighed and turned to watch the road. However, before he could swing again, there was a sudden rattle of bolts and the door swung open, revealing Eliza, hands on hips with a playful smile on her face.

"What took you so long?" she laughed, before pushing past they back to the van.

"How the…?" Mark began but Eliza only laughed again, saying.

"Look, when you go out every night at university and need to get back into your hall of residence at around four in the morning without anyone knowing, you pick up a few tricks. For example checking the windows at the back. Anyway, I'll be in the van with Lauren if you need me." She added.

"Bet you will…" Mark replied with a grin, before Eliza punched him on the arm and walked off, a smug smile on her face, before calling back.

"Just leave the jokes to me Mark; you just go loot the crazy guy's house."

The two men stepped into the empty house without another word, Mark hefting the crowbar and Chris drawing the pistol from his belt, before Chris called up the stairs.

"Stan! Stan! It's me, Chris! We're here to check on you! Stan?"

There was no answer.

"Must have gone already." Mark said, scratching his head. This place was kind of scaring him already.

There was a weird smell in the house that assaulted Mark's senses, not of death and decay, like those dead men shambling around on the streets, but something more human, mainly sweat, sour milk and what could only be described as human waste.

"God, Stan really was a bit of a nutjob…" he said grimly as they stepped over boxes filled with old newspapers and magazines, as well as maps ,tables and charts, all completely meaningless to Mark and Chris, and all with bizarre drawings of ley lines, UFO sightings and crop circles.

"Look, we just need to grab some supplies for now." Chris said, nervously holding his gun out in front of him. "Food, water, maybe some weapons if Stan really was as crazy about defending himself from the government as he seemed to be."

Mark nodded and they moved out of the hallway into the kitchen, where the horrible stench of decay and the buzzing of flies greeted them.

"Jesus…" Mark said as he saw the corpse sprawled over the worktop. "Is it Stan?"

"No." Chris replied, checking it quickly. "Too thin for a start."

Looking around he saw a large bloodstain across the floor, leading from the open back door.

Mark meanwhile had moved over the corpse, and removed the heavy meat cleaver embedded in its head.

"Whoa…" he said with a faint sense of awe. " I could kill a lot of shamblers with this…" and then he took a few practice swings with it before sticking it in his belt.

Chris looked over, having found the fridge to be empty except for some rotted baking powder.

"For a survivalist Stan sure doesn't have a lot to survive on…What do you think Mark?"

But Mark wasn't listening. He had already seen something metallic glinting in the next room in the weak light of the kitchen lamp and was already going to check it out.

When he came into the darkened lounge, kicking through empty beer cans and fast food wrappers, he finally saw what was on the table.

"Sweet Jesus." He said softly, a sense of excitement in his voice. There, on the scuffed wooden coffee table, surrounded by conspiracy book with titles like _The Lincoln/Kennedy Conspiracy and_ _Roswell: Finest Hour of the Illuminati, partially_ wrapped in a stained kitchen towel, was a black metal hunting crossbow.

Chris wandered into the lounge, a cardboard box under one arm.

"Hey Mark I found some bottled water under the sink. Might be a bit scummy but…"

"Fuck the water!" Mark laughed. "Seems Stan wasn't lying about the crossbow after all, found a whole box of bolts as well." He added a childish grin on his face.

"I know but…" Chris began, but then stopped, Mark also pausing in his laughter about finding a new weapon.

"Did you…? Mark said, but Chris only nodded in agreement as they both stood silently. They had both heard it.

The sound of movement upstairs.

In the van outside Eliza was fiddling with the radio. So far all she had found was Classic FM repeating some Mozart symphony and Radio 1 was just playing the Top 40 for about the third time running. So far she had heard no other human voices for the past half an hour, besides Lauren mumbling in her sleep in the back. Suddenly, as she lazily turned the dial again, she found herself listening to BBC Radio 2, but the normal easy listening she would have expected was replaced by a news programme, with a shaken sounding reporter speaking slowly on the other end.

"…and the Prime Minister is believed to have passed away peacefully this morning. Our top story, riots in the East End of London have dissolved into anarchy as a new disease is beginning to…reanimate its victims. The so called 'walkers' or 'shamblers' are cannibalistic, savage and violent, and any they kill come back as one of them. Rioters in the area are being overrun, as are local police units. In response, the new Prime Minister has approved the deployment of military units to the area, and other cities around the UK. Back to…"

But Eliza stopped listening to the radio when she turned back to check on Lauren, and saw an ominous orange glow on the road behind, along with a crowd of shadowy figures, getting steadily closer. She was considering going up to the house and getting Mark and Chris, but when she heard a gunshot from within, she figured they had bigger problems to deal with.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Mark screamed, as he watched the lumbering figure standing in the kitchen doorway. He hadn't been surprised initially to see Stan shamble down the stairs, figuring the fat survivalist was probably drunk but when he tried to take a bite out of him he figured otherwise.

Now, with the huge form of Stan, naked except for a grimy pair of boxer shorts, standing metres away from them ready to eat them both, Mark wasn't as feeling as confident as he thought about his first zombie kill. The strange quiet except for Stan's moans was broken as Chris fired his pistol, the gunshot echoing in the enclosed space.

"You only fucking grazed his face!" Mark shouted, noticing the red gash across Stan's right cheek.

"Alright, alright." Chris shot back. "I'm just not…oh shit!"

The two men dodged back as Stan lunged for them, instead ending up on the kitchen table in a heap, giving the two long enough to go around the table to avoid his next attack. Chris aimed the gun at Stan's head slowly rising up off the table, pulled the trigger, and was only met by a dull click.

"Oh God, it just jammed!" Chris was shouting as Stan picked himself up off the table, exposing the huge bite mark on his left arm. "Mark, time to put that crossbow to good use!"

"It's not loaded!" Mark replied, hefting the useless weapon. "And I don't think I can crack that fat fucks head with this …"

Then Stan was up again and they were forced to dodge around the table again. But Mark was too slow, and Stan was on top of him, his biting teeth centimetres from Mark's face.

Eliza crouched low in the van, hands over her head as the windows on either side were smashed in. She heard voices outside, and before she could do anything, she was being dragged from the van, literally kicking and screaming, and unceremoniously dumped on the tarmac face down. Around her she heard footsteps of a large group, and then she was kicked onto her side as a voice above her laughed.

Then she slowly looked up, and felt her blood run cold.

All around her stood at least thirty men in dark clothing, hoods and balaclavas hiding their faces, like the stereotypical London gang member. But it wasn't that which scared her. It was the fact at least ten of them had guns, and the rest had an assortment of huge knives, machetes and blunt weapons on their person, a few of them holding unlit petrol bombs. One of them aimed his pistol at her face, laughing as he boasted to his friends.

"Well boys, looks like we can have ourselves a bit of fun…"

As the others laughed she suddenly saw another figure push through the crowd toward her. He looked completely out of place amongst the gang, dressed in a stylish grey suit and red tie, a black overcoat over the top. The young man smiled at her, and for a second she thought he was actually quite handsome, that maybe this was her knight in shining arm come to rescue her. Then she noticed the AK-47 in his right hand.

"Sunil Singh." He introduced himself as politely, offering her a hand. "Now, I believe your coming with us…"

Instantly she drew back.

"Wait…What? I'm not going anywhere."

For a second the man's eyes blazed with anger, but he stopped himself, taking a deep breath before speaking again, still remaining polite but with a firm edge to his voice.

"Look, miss…."

Eliza shook her head. There was something about this man she didn't trust, especially the way his finger curled around the trigger of his gun as he spoke to her.

"I'm not going anywhere." She repeated, her eyes glancing through the crowd, desperately trying to find Lauren. "Especially not without Lauren."

Sunil smiled, but this time there was a strange venom behind it.

"Ah, the other girl. Of course. Bring the other girl!"

As he said this the group parted for a second, and Eliza saw Lauren dragged forward by a grinning little man with a baseball bat, who pushed her across to Sunil, giving her arse a creepy squeeze before he let her go.

Sunil caught her deftly in his arm, and spoke softly to her, giving a wink at Eliza for a second.

"Now, Lauren is it? Well we're taking you and your friend with us. Keep you safe from the shamblers out there… Can you walk?"

Lauren shook her head defiantly and Sunil sighed, gripping her slightly tighter as he reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand, having handed his rifle to another gang member.

"Pity."

Then he drew a black automatic pistol from his pocket, turned his face and shot Lauren in the head.

"There…" he said, grinning as he pushed the body into Eliza, casually wiping blood off his face.

"Looks like you'll have to carry her…"

Mark was screaming as Stan's teeth came closer, shouting at Chris to do something. The next thing he knew, there was a sharp pain on the left side of his head, and Stan was off him, Chris standing over him with a wooden chair in hand.

Mark touched his left cheek, feeling a bruise where the chair had hit him.

"That's going to leave a mark." He laughed for a second, but Chris was already moving, looking out of the window.

"Did you kill him?" Mark said finally, but Chris wasn't listening as his eyes widened in fear.

"Shit, they've got Eliza!" he was shouting, glancing back at Mark.

"Who? Come on we need to go!"

Mark looked down and saw Stan begin to get up slowly.

"What does it take to kill that guy?" he muttered as he grabbed the crossbow and the box of bolts off the floor and made for the front door, Chris quickly following, the box full of bottled water in one hand, jammed pistol in the other.

But there was no time to think as he wrenched the door open, hearing Stan's footsteps getting closer. They pounded down the drive, a droning whirring in Mark's ears, although whether that was something outside or the throbbing pain in his head he didn't know. But as he looked down at the van he saw mob of armed men, all standing around Eliza and a man in a suit with an AK, the girl sobbing over the corpse of Lauren.

"Shit…" he said softly, the noticed Stan in the doorway, slowly stumbling towards them.

"Shit!" he repeated, not knowing which would be worse, shambling Stan or the gang by the van.

But the choice was made for him as the whirring overhead grew louder and then the sharp crack of a high powered rifle filled the air. Mark glanced back and saw Stan fall, a bullet hole clean between his eyes. Then it was chaos as a green military helicopter roared overhead, snipers visible aiming out the sides.

"Out of the frying pan…" Chris muttered as the gang in the street scattered.

Eliza was deaf to the world, looking down at the body of Lauren in her arms, tears stinging her eyes as they fell freely onto the concrete. Above her Sunil stood, absently checking over his rifle, no remorse in his grey eyes.

She didn't hear the first gunshot, but when a nearby gang member keeled over, blood pumping from his head, she finally looked up. Mark and Chris were running towards her, both looking upward at something overhead, but she only saw Sunil, calmly standing there as his gang scattered.

"Until next time…" he laughed, giving her a wink before he disappeared into the darkness as she fainted onto the hard tarmac.


	9. Chapter 9- For Queen And Country

The next day and the riots were no longer the top story. The top story of the day literally rolled into London in the early morning, as the full might of the British Army was deployed on home soil in the largest scale operation since the Second World War. As bleary eyed Londoners looked on, the largest contingent had thundered straight into the capital from bases all across the South-East, convoys of troop transports, tanks and armoured vehicles whilst Lynx attack helicopters and Apache gunships roared overhead.

And yet the military units did not, as many of the public believed, move to the East End, where reports of the dead coming back to life were still flooding out from, but to various key strategic sites throughout the capital. The Houses of Parliament, railway stations, Heathrow airport and hospitals were all major military targets, leading internet forums and social networking sites to be ablaze with rumours and stories. The phrase '#walkers' went viral within hours.

But, whilst most of the population were engaged in hearsay and rumour making, former Health Minister Harold Douglas had bigger problems to deal with. His new office in Westminster felt almost as alien to him as the columns of soldiers setting up defensive positions in the streets outside, and the whir of army helicopters overhead. He sighed as he stood up from the leather chair he had been sat in, looking outside for a second, notcing a thick column of smoke on the horizon.

As the Defence Secretary entered his office, newly decked out in his old SAS colonels uniform, Harold found himself speaking a quote from a book he had been reading.

"Smoke rises from the mountain of doom, the hour grows late, and Gandalf the Grey rides to Isengard seeking my counsel."

"Excuse me sir?" replied the Defence Secretary, a frown on his hard features.

"Very soon, he will have summoned an army great enough to launch an assault upon all of Middle-earth…" Harold continued, and then turned with a weak smile to the Defence Secretary.

"Nothing, just a quote from a book I've been reading…"

"The Lord of the Rings sir?"

Harold laughed.

"Well the events of the past few days might as well have been taken from a fantasy novel. The dead returning to life, armed thugs on the streets of London, and an army riding into London for the first time since the Roman invasion."

The Defence Secretary looked confused, and Harold sighed. He missed the Home Secretary. At least he had been a good listener.

"Anyway." He began, changing the subject. "I believe your military units are all in position?"

"Of course. I've been liaising with General Horton over in the centre near Kensington Palace. Main Command has been set up in Hyde Park. We have a battalion of the Coldstream Guards, the Royal Horse Artillery and a detachment of the Logistics Corps in that area, along with a few platoons of the Gurkha Brigade in the immediate area, with close support from RAF helicopters. We also have armed police units deployed throughout the capital, along with individual platoons from several divisions patrolling key sites."

"Are troops being sent into the East End?"

The Defence Secretary shook his head.

"Not in large numbers. Main Commands estimating we can have the whole area cleared in a few days but we need to wait for specialist units ready to take it back. We're waiting on a water cannon and armoured vehicles from Northern Ireland so until then we just have helicopters patrolling the area."

Harold nodded.

"Since when were you back in the army? You speak more like a soldier than a politician."

The Defence Secretary smiled proudly.

"Reenlisted this morning. Feels good to be back in the old uniform. Before the end of this I think the British Army will need all the veterans it can get."

And with that the old soldier saluted Harold, who awkwardly attempted to return the gesture before deciding against it, and left the room.

Harold turned to look out the window again, closing his eyes for a second. The responsibilities of the new job weighed heavily on him. There had been no official ceremony yesterday afternoon, as the Prime Minister lay dying on a hospital bed, face deathly pale. The bite he had sustained only the day before had quickly become infected and resistant to anything the doctors threw at it. And, with the only witnesses Harold and a grim faced soldier, the Prime Minister had said, in a weak voice.

"Harold…You will keep the country together?"

It hadn't been a request. Harold had only had time to nod before the Prime Minister had taken his final breaths and the soldier politely but respectfully told him to leave the room before easing the sidearm from his holster.

And now, as he saw soldiers confronting crowds of protestors with assault rifles and tanks outside, he began to doubt he could keep the promise he made to his dying colleague.

Private Jessica Parr shivered awkwardly in the cold, earning a few looks from her male colleagues. As the only female member of her squad, she was usually the butt of much of the jokes and banter from her other squad mates. But at the moment, there was no laughter or joking from any of them. The current deployment was just so alien to them.

To Jessica, standing around at Main Command, currently known as Camp Serpentine due to the nearby artificial lake, this deployment was the most dangerous. And for someone who had been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and had faced daily fire fights and the threat of being blown up by IEDs or suicide bombers at any point, the fact that she was scared of being in her own hometown was a frightening thought.

She could face crazed insurgents and fanatics any day of the week, but the thought of being ordered to shoot her own countrymen was a sobering thought. The only upside to this deployment was the fact she wasn't in an active role at the moment. At least not yet. At the moment a detachment of the elite Coldstream Guards, backed up by a detachment of the Gurkha Rifles, had been sent to St Mary's Hospital, only a mile or so to the north, to back up police units in the area who were reporting increasing numbers of reanimated dead in the hospital. So far the 'walkers' or 'shamblers' had been derided by many soldiers at the base as rumours and hearsay about the East End riots going too far, and Jessica had to agree. The dead returning to life? More likely drunk or drugged up rioters frightening faint hearted middle class families by being a bit too close to their quiet estates.

She laughed slightly, absently checking her L85A2 assault rifle. Jessica seriously doubted she would need it today.

However, only a mile away, the soldiers at St Mary's Hospital could only pray that what they were facing were drunken rioters.

"They're coming through!" shouted Sergeant Kyle Andrews of the Coldstream Guards, bracing the door behind him as dead hands hammered on the other side. Instantly another soldier and a shell shocked policeman ran to assist him, trying to shut out the moans and howls from the other side.

The sergeant was breathing heavily, shattered from sprinting down long hospital corridors for the past hour, carrying his wounded commanding officer to the rest of his squad before another man told him, with tears in his eyes, that the officer had been dead for the past half an hour.

They had learnt quickly to put a bullet in the head of any body they found, after Kyle's best mate Private Sylvester 'Rambo' Curtis, the squad heavy weapons specialist, had been bitten by a reanimated nurse they thought was dead. They had shot the chewed up bitch to pieces, practically torn her in half, but it hadn't been enough to save Curtis. Kyle had been the one who had to put the soldier down, had to look his friend straight in the eye, the man who had run out into a raging fire fight to drag the wounded Andrews to safety without a moment's hesitation during Operation Panthers Claw, and put a bullet in his skull.

Kyle shook himself. Now was not the time to think about the past hour. Ever since they had marched into the car park of this dead hospital they had known something was wrong. When they saw the bodies amongst the cars begin to move, and the bloodstains painting the interiors of abandoned ambulances, they had instantly known that these were no rioters or drunken youths. This was something different.

"They're breaking through!" bellowed the police officer, hastily slamming another magazine in his assault rifle as a pale hand punched through the thin wound and grabbed at the air.

"Alright boys I've got an idea!" Kyle said, having to shout over the hammering on the door and moans of the dead. "On the count of three…" he began, and then stopped momentarily as a dead face appeared in the widening gap between the double doors and shoved his combat knife into its forehead.

"On the count of three…" He repeated, looking each man beside him in the eye, hoping they would forgive him if his plan failed. "We open this door, drop a grenade and fall back. It should slow them and we can drop the others as they crawl towards us and run for the car park. Once we're out of this place it's a straight run back to Camp Serpentine, then we can just call an airstrike and bury the whole fucking lot!"

Each man nodded slowly, still straining to keep the doors closed from the hungry dead outside as he pulled a grenade from his webbing.

"3-2-1…Go, open it!" Kyle roared, letting the grenade drop to the floor and both hands on his rifle as they ran back down the corridor, the other soldier and policeman both sprinting back with him, the roar of the grenade explosion deafening them momentarily.

"The smokes clearing. Take them down!" the sergeant ordered, letting off shots from his rifle, the other soldier firing his pistol with loud bangs, whilst the disconcerted policeman fired his assault rifle from the hip, peppering the walkers with bullets, little puffs of blood emerging from the still standing undead.

"Aim for the head, man!" the other soldier shouted, as the crawling undead began to make steady progress toward them as they retreated down the corridor. Turning away from the walkers as he reloaded his rifle, Kyle spotted a sign for a fire exit, quickly pointing it out to his comrades.

But as they ran further down the corridor, past trashed surgeries and darkened offices, they turned the corner and were suddenly confronted by a mob of undead soldiers, still in their combat fatigues, and a few still clutching their now useless weapons. Instantly they fell upon the three men, pulling down the police officer and biting into him as he howled in pain and burying the other two under a pile of moving corpses.

The sergeant smashed aside the walker who fell upon him, a man he had once challenged to a shooting contest during the Iraq War, and rammed his knife into its skull, a sickening crunch announcing that it was stuck deep. He pulled away and ran past the undead now busy feasting on the now silent police officer, the other sodleir, sweating and covered in blood screaming at Kyle as he caught up to him.

"I'm fucking out! I need ammo!"

"Calm down soldier." Kyle said firmly, allowing the now empty magazine from his L85 to clatter to the polished floor. "Its fixed bayonets from now on…" and he quickly fitted his bayonet to the end of his rifle, holding it in both hands with a grim smile as they pounded towards the emergency exit.

"Just like my grandfather used to fight…"

But the smile on his face died as, metres from the tantalisingly close exit door, a mob of undead suddenly fell through a locked door to their left, and both men were swept under a wave of corpses, many still moving.

Kyle snarled in rage as he forced his way out of the pile, bayonet painted crimson, and reached to grab the other soldier, who was still trapped under the corpses. But the young man only shook his head, punching away the biting undead even as they swarmed over him.

"For Queen and Country, sergeant. Just run!"

And with that the sergeant was running, as the other soldier drew a grenade from his belt and, winking at Kyle even as the undead bit into him, he pulled the pin.

Kyle was blown off his feet by the explosion, and picked himself up quickly, checked himself for injuries and took one fleeting glance back, noticing the walkers now crawling toward him, some little more than heads with an arm attached, still out to devour him.

"What does it take to kill you fuckers!" Kyle roared, then was out of the door and into the sunlight, slightly blinding after the oppressive dark of the dead hospital.

All around him there were bodies stacked around the back loading dock, many in body bags, bullet holes in the tops of many, where the head would be.

Kyle had hear that on the news in his barracks last night, how the police were now putting bullets in the heads of dead rioters, as a 'precaution', and stacking body bags for incineration. As he walked amongst them, pulling the sidearm from the holster of a dead soldier, the poor man's head missing. Checking the magazine, he only had one bullet left.

"Save it for me…" he muttered to himself grimly, and then he noticed one of the nearby body bags begin to move slightly, as if someone was inside, trying to get out.

"Fuck…" Kyle said, now moving slightly faster across the car park, hearing the sound of London traffic only a few streets away, imagining the moment when the horde from the hospital spilled out into busy London traffic. Then he saw even more bodies still moving, other body bags rolling around on the tarmac, hands scrabbling on the thin plastic, hands that would soon split from the bags like the chestburster from _Alien_.

He began to run across the hard concrete, his rifle held in one hand, pistol in the other, but then saw something which made his blood run cold.

Up ahead a yellow and green ambulance lay on its side, a huge gash along its right side and bloody handprints all over it and underneath it were dozens of corpses, and all of them were moving. Despite their spines being shattered and torsos crushed, despite the best efforts of the now dead ambulance driver to take them all out, they were still alive, still reaching to grab the sergeant.

That's when Kyle's hope died.

And so, when a crawling undead soldier bit into his ankle, he only registered it as a slight pain, looked at the pistol in his hand and placed it to his head.

"For Queen and Country…" he said, as he pulled the trigger.

Jessica Parr sighed as she stared out at the parks beyond. They had heard a few crackles of distant gunfire from St Marys a while back, but that was nothing serious to worry about. That was until her squad mate Corporal Jones, his L85 in the crook of his elbow came running over, his face pale and fear in his eyes.

That was what jolted her to reality. This man that she had known for almost ten years, who had been with her since the first day at the Army Training College in Harrogate, when she had first encountered him stealing whisky from the officer's mess on the first day. She had seen him face down a hulking Royal Marine sergeant after he came on a little too strongly to her during a pub crawl in Catterick, and had even witnessed him charge a Taliban machine gun nest with nothing but a can of Fosters and a bayonet. The corporal was one of the most fearless, and completely crazy, people she had ever met. If he was scared, Jessica thought, shit was going down.

As he dragged her over to a nearby communications tent, she found a whole platoons worth of soldiers, many not even in full combat gear, all huddled around a single radio, all listening intently to what was being said.

"Command this is Deadeye-Six, we are spotting individual Whiskey-Delta's on Bayswater Road. Permission to engage and destroy?"

As the enraptured audience listened, the husky voice of Colonel Hillsbourough, the base commander came on the line.

"Permission granted Deadeye-Six. You are clear to engage."

From across the park echoed the sound of high powered sniper rifles from the team currently stationed on the roof of the Clarendon Place Hotel.

But then, as the whir of a passing helicopter filled the air, the helicopter pilot came onto the net.

"Command this is Bigeye-Four, we are seeing at least two hundred Whiskey-Deltas coming out of St Mary's."

"This is Deadeye-Six, Command, I can confirm that. We are now seeing multiple groups moving in from the north. Requesting close air support."

Instantly the colonel's voice took on a harder tone.

"Denied Deadeye-Six, all Apaches are on standby until our boys are clear."

For a second there was silence on the radio, and a few men cast worried glances in the direction of the hospital until suddenly the radio crackled into life again.

"With all due respect command…those Whiskey-Deltas' are our boys."

This caused a collective gasp of horror from the assembled men and women, and already some were leaving the tent, probably to get their gear ready for the inevitable attack, Jessica thought. But by now the colonel was in his element.

"Alright, we need to sort this now. I want artillery firing on St Mary's hospital. Assume all civilians in the area are dead or Whiskey-Deltas. Raven-One, I need precision air strikes on the swarm as they move across the park. All base personnel in combat positons! We are now in a battle situation!"

Instantly the calm atmosphere in the tent was lost, as chairs were shoved aside and each man and woman moved to their ten to get their equipment, or to get into their predesigned positions. For Jessica this routine was second nature as she followed Corporal Jones and the rest of her squad to their firing point, a sandbagged redoubt by a boarded up café a few hundred metres from the main base, which other soldiers were already tearing the weak plywood boards off to set up an ammo dump in, whilst two snipers perched on the roof.

As Jessica checked her weapon and crouched in her position, the ground shook as the guns of the Royal Horse Artillery roared out, the explosion of shells on the road beyond seeming much closer than it actually was.

"Keep it together lads…and Jess" came the voice of Sergeant Wilson, the squad leader, using the tired old joke that had been going since Iraq to keep the squad morale up. "We can keep this…"

His inspirational words were lost in a roar of helicopter blades as an Apache helicopter came over almost at treetop level, firing a barrage of rockets and auto cannon fire into the distance.

"Damn flyboys!" laughed a nearby soldier, waving a fist at the hovering gunship before it climbed upwards and let off another deafening burst of heavy gunfire.

"Form up! Form up! Here they come!" shouted Wilson, setting his rifle to his shoulder.

As Jessica and the other watched, the first walkers began to emerge from the treeline, shambling across the freshly cut grass like drunken revellers. Instantly the heads of the two closest corpses, two hospital patients naked except for stained boxer shorts, exploded, and the crack of two sniper rifles filled the air.

"Remember to aim for the head!" ordered one of the snipers from his vantage point, before putting a bullet through the left eye of an undead policewoman.

As one the hundred strong firing lines erupted in a roar of gunfire, single shots taking the heads off every walker to come within a hundred metres. But, Jessica thought as she took the head off a blood stained traffic warden, it still wasn't enough.

Even as the pile of newly dead corpses grew larger, more kept stumbling in from the road, the sniper team Deadeye-Six on the radio net again.

"This is Deadeye-Six, we have spotted another group of walkers heading straight for you're…oh God, they're in! Charlie, shoot them! They've broken in! Our position is compromised….!"

As the snipers anguished cries turned into screams of pain, they didn't need the radio to hear them anymore, and the shots from the Clarednon Hotel ceased.

"Shit, they must have left some walkers locked in the hotel when they evacuated. Poor fuckers…" a nearby soldier said, glancing momentarily at the roof of the nearby hotel, before ramming a new magazine into his rifle and the line continued firing.

"I'm running low on ammo!" declared another man further down the line, quickly running to get some new magazines from the ammo dump.

"Same here!" shouted another man, and Jessica soon saw at least two dozen soldiers sprinting to the ammo dump.

"Stay in formation!" called a nearby lieutenant. "We need an ammo runner if we're going to keep these bastards back!"

As they kept firing, the Apaches did another sweep, three gunships roaring overhead to let loose another screaming hail of rockets into the undead ranks.

"Yeah! Keep it coming!" roared Corporal Jones, whooping like he did when he watched an Arsenal game, even doing the same ridiculous dance.

"Corporal, stay in formation you stupid prick!" Sergeant Wilson bellowed, practically hurling the man back into position. "I do not want to lose a…gaaah!" the sergeant suddenly looked down, and Jessica felt a sense of horror as she saw his right leg clamped in the teeth of a crawling undead, dressed in a ragged business suit ,trailing banknotes behind his bloody torso.

The sergeant's face paled, and he tried to form words, but then his head exploded in a burst of crimson, and the sniper on the restaurant roof was shouting something, but Jessica didn't hear, only absently put a round through the crawling thing's head. All around her other soldiers were shouting, and she caught snippets of it as she retreated back, firing her rifle in between sobs.

"It's got the corporal!"

"Shoot them shoot them!"

"Fuck, that's fucking Simms! He's a fucking corpse!"

As she looked back up she saw the horde, still advancing, all moaning and snarling in unison, undeterred by the guns and bombs and bullets they faced, wading through a thundering artillery barrage to get to their prey. She saw an undead soldier, one she had had a one night stand with a year ago on some training exercise, take a round to the chest, then have an arm torn off by an explosion, and just keep going, biting into a howling lieutenant with a snarl.

"Fall back!" ordered one of the snipers, seconds before a tide of walkers clambered onto their position and tore them apart.

Jessica ran, shoving past shell shocked soldiers in her haste to escape, watching men just fall to their knees and cry like infants, others turning their guns on themselves as the horde continued its impossible advance. A few were just lying on the ground silently, waiting for the undead to tear them apart.

As they ran the tree line in front of them exploded out and a line of five Challenger Mark 2 battle tanks thundered past, their gunners roaring away on heavy machine guns as the ground shook from main cannon shots.

As the tanks roared past and the line continued to retreat, Jessica took a glance back. The tanks were useless. She saw one fire its main cannon straight into a pack of walkers with no effect, the surviving undead crawling towards it regardless. Another tank was swarmed by undead clambering on the sites, four of them descending upon the terrified gunner in a tide of blood and screaming.

"Back to the base! Back to the base!" a soldier next to her screamed, turning to let off a burst from his rifle before a stray round struck him in the neck and he crumpled. All around them there was just crazy shooting, men fearfully gunning down soldiers running towards them, snipers in the helicopters above mistaking wounded men for walkers.

Camp Serpentine loomed up ahead, but it looked like a scene from hell. The motor pool was ablaze, many of the tents were being trampled by the retreating soldiers and machine gun positions were being overrun by the undead rushing in from all sides.

Jessica ran through it all, her voice hoarse from screaming and shouting to her comrades, her rifle gone and her sidearm almost empty. A howling army doctor ran towards her, his clothes stained red.

"All the wounded! I had to shoot them all! They just wouldn't stay dead!" he babbled, and Jessica threw him aside, desperately looking for the rest of her squad. Up ahead she saw Corporal Jones, his face pale, firing off bursts from his rifle from atop a wrecked watchtower.

"Get to the airfield!" he was shouting "We need to get out of here!"

Seeing Jessica he jumped down, absently fixing his bayonet as he did so.

"We need to move." He said, and Jessica nodded dumbly as he half dragged, half carried his squad mate to the airfield, where three Chinook helicopters sat, rotors already powering up as soldiers literally threw themselves aboard. Overhead two Lynx helicopters thundered, door gunners firing off bursts into the oncoming horde of undead, who were still shambling after the retreating soldiers.

Jones led Jessica to the nearest helicopter and they both began to climb aboard but were pushed back by a burly sergeant.

"No room lads!" he shouted, his L85 in hand. "We're already at capacity!"

Corporal Jones nodded solemnly, and then turned away but shoved Jessica into the arms of the sergeant.

"Take her." He said softly, and when the sergeant continued to shake his head, held his bayonet to the man's face.

"I said take her." He repeated. "Or do you want to lose an eye?"

The sergeant shook his head and let Jessica pass, but she looked back.

"What about you?" she cried over the roar of the helicopter beginning to power up.

"I'll be fine!" he said casually as he stepped back, the back door beginning to close behind him. "You know me, I signed up for…"

His response was lost as the door closed and the helicopter rose up, the assembled soldiers within breathing a collective sigh of relief.

"That guy has balls of steel." muttered a soldier nearby, and Jessica replied absently, trying to hold back tears.

"Yes, yes he does…"

But, as the helicopter left the ruins of Camp Serpentine, Jessica looked out of the window and watched as low flying Eurofighter Typhoons did strafing runs on Hyde Park, the orange glow of firebombs lighting the London streets below.

We did all this…" she said to herself. "Lost all those good men." And she looked around at those left alive in the helicopter, battered and bruised, their bodies safe but their minds slipping away. All in duty to the nation.

For Queen and Country.


	10. Chapter 10- The School

Eliza's sobs had destroyed Chris' emotional endurance. Or what was left of it. His whole world had come crashing down in a matter of hours. He was strong and had endured a lot throughout his life, but he was beginning to lose himself. Eliza hadn't said a word for hours after they buried Lauren. He hated seeing his sister in such a state and he felt guilty for leaving them in the van unprotected, but Chris felt like he'd had no other choice. But Lauren had died in vain now, since they'd left without scratching the surface of the supplies from Stan's place, which Chris knew would be crammed full of stuff that could have kept all of them alive for a very long time. When the soldiers had come down the street, shooting corpses in the head as lorries full of troops drove over them, Chris and Mark had literally had to drag Eliza, the corpse of Laruen still warm in her arms, blood pooling on her chest, away from that horrible place. The last he saw of Stan's house, a soldier with a flamethrower was setting it ablaze, the flames reflected in the empty lenses of the soldier's gas masks.

At the same time, Chris thought it might have been a mercy. He knew whatever his fate was going to be in this new world, it wouldn't be pleasant. Maybe a bullet to the head wasn't such a bad way to go. Chris, Eliza and Mark had continued their journey on foot. The thugs had damaged something in the van's engine that couldn't be repaired. All three had been silent since Lauren's funeral, if you could call it that. But Chris had been the only one on guard, Mark seemed distracted and Chris knew what he was thinking about. His son.

That's where they were going now. Mark had told Chris where his son's school was. Chris knew the place and took lead. Mark needed a break. Chris was constantly sweeping the area with his pistol, aiming in the direction of every single sound. He thought it was too quiet. Maybe the fuckers were attracted by something big going on, Chris thought. He was sure he heard distant explosions in the direction of central London.

After a long tense walk, they arrived at the school Mark's son had been attending. Mark suddenly became animate. Eliza perked up too, probably out of the desire to survive. This sight made Chris happy, Eliza hadn't completely lost the will to live. Maybe she'll get through this in time, he thought. They approached the front entrance to the school. Chris looked in and saw a huge number of walkers inside. He then saw a second, smaller building that was detached from the rest of the school, less walkers inside, he guessed. Chris sprinted towards the other building.

"What are you doing?" Mark shouted at him. Chris just kept running. Mark's shout had given them less time than he had hoped. Chris burst in through the door of the second building and searched for a fire alarm. He pulled it and a piercingly loud bell rang in that section of the school. Chris' head felt like it was going to burst into flames from the dizzying volume of the shrill ringing. He almost stumbled into the clutches of a walker in his state, before hastily putting a bullet in its face. He ran out of the entrance and blocked it with a table that had been lying in the corridor, covered in bloody handprints. The walkers seemed more interested in the sound of the bell than Chris now, and he saw the undead from the main school shamble towards the detached building. They entered cautiously now, as the corridor was completely silent. They saw classrooms full of blood, littered with the half eaten corpses of the children that had belonged in the classes. Mark's eyes didn't linger on a single one, not opening the doors. They knew there would be no survivors in those rooms. Mark seemed to know where his son would have been. Mark stopped.

"This is his classroom." He choked. Chris put his hand on his friend's shoulder and nodded.

"I've got you man. No matter what's in there, I'm here for you." Chris said.

They opened the door together.

They saw the teacher hanging from the ceiling, a belt around his throat. He'd hung himself. Yet he wasn't dead. The teacher growled and swung an arm lazily at Eliza, who screamed and jumped back. Chris went for his gun.

"Mark, hurry up man. I'm going to shoot him, but the walkers will come when I fire. We don't have much time." Chris said, hurriedly. Mark was hunched over the body of a little girl who had been eaten to an almost unrecognisable state, her face was barely intact and the rest of her body was an empty skeleton with snapped bones and small chunks of flesh that the monsters hadn't bothered to

pick off the bone.

"She was called Suzie. My boy had a crush on her. I bought a box of chocolates so that he had something to give to her on Valentine's Day…" Mark said, his voice empty. Chris looked to the corner of the room where a young teaching assistant had gathered all of the children and shot them all before shooting herself. Most of the dead children weren't entirely dead. Their quiet groans could barely be heard. They were too weak to even move.

"They can't have all been bitten." Chris observed.

"What the fuck? How does that fucking help us right now!" Mark shouted, disgusted at Chris. Children had died and all Chris could do was observe coldly. Like he had no emotion. Chris put his gun to the teacher's head and fired. Chris then quickly stripped the corpse to its underwear. Mark gave him a stormy look, until he realised what Chris was trying to get across.

"No bite-marks?" Mark asked.  
"No bite-marks." Chris confirmed.

"So this is going to happen to all of us? No matter how we die?" Mark asked.

"Unless it destroys the brain. We're all infected, Mark," Chris said

"We're all infected?" Mark asked.

Chris just nodded.

They knew the walkers were coming.

"Is he here?" Chris asked.

"No." Mark said.

"Let's go." Chris said.

Mark and Eliza left the room and sprinted towards the back exit.

Chris stayed behind, firing shots into the undead children in the corner until his gun was empty.

"I'm sorry." He whispered.

Chris then exited the classroom. The walkers were close to him now and he couldn't see Mark and Eliza. He ran towards the exit. Once outside, Chris saw two corpses, lying out on the empty playground.

He knew who they were.

Mark was on his knees sobbing into the smaller body. A bullet through the boy's head, and his mother's, the gun that had killed them lay next to Mark's ex-wife, Sandra's cold, dead hands. The unmoving bodies of dead again walkers surrounded them.

Tom and Sandra were dead.

Mark had gone beyond crying or sobbing into genuine howls of agony. In a rage he grabbed the pistol from Sandra's hand and aimed it at her dead face, screaming as he pulled the trigger over and over again, every click of the empty chamber like a knife in the defeated man's soul.

Chris hauled Mark to his feet but his friend swung a savage backhand, his arm colliding with Chris' face. He felt blood rushing out of the side of his head and the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. Chris fell and Mark returned to his mourning.

As Chris began to black out, he saw the figure of a ragged old man in an army uniform firing shots at the walkers pouring out of the school before he dragged Mark away and Eliza moved Chris' unconscious body away from the slaughter…


	11. Chapter 11- The Bravest Of The Brave

Mark splashed water into his tired face, looking at his pale features in the cracked mirror. This was what Chris said he always did after a nightmare, but Mark didn't really see how it helped. The screams still haunted his thoughts regardless.

As he looked at his reflection through sunken eyes, his thoughts turned back to the weird dream he had had. As soon as the strange soldier had dragged him away from that hell of a school, and the body of his only son, his mind was blank. He vaguely remembered being taken to a red brick house in a long row of terraces, stumbling up the stairs and collapsing on the first bed he found. And from then on his night had been dominated by that one image, of his son dead on the grey tarmac, and the sightless eyes of that bitch Sandra, mocking him .She had been there, in his dream, or rather nightmare, laughing as she blew out the brains of his screaming son, then grinning as she shoved the gun in her own mouth and pulled the trigger. That same image had been there all the time, in different ways but always the same outcome. Sometimes he was there, and she spoke to him before committing the act, sometimes he arrived to find the aftermath and sometimes, most disturbingly of all, he was the one telling Sandra to do it and handing her the gun.

He shook himself. Now was not the time for those sorts of thoughts. He exited the bathroom, changing his shirt from one of his hanging on the bannister in the tight corridor. In the room to his right Chris lay asleep on one of the beds, an ugly bruise evidence for when Mark hit him. He really hadn't meant to do that, it had been a spur of the moment sort of thing, an attempt to just lash out and make someone pay. Closing the door quickly he entered the other room at the end of the hall, finding his stuff all lay out on the bedside table next to the unmade bed. Quickly finding his jeans from the floor and throwing them on he stuck the evil looking cleaver through his belt, along with the short handled crowbar before pulling on his heavy work boots. The crossbow he found by the wardrobe, and, after checking it was still in working order, left it where it was, the box full of bolts next to it. Opening the wardrobe he found a green army dress uniform, which had obviously been well kept, and a few odd shirts.

After closing the wardrobe he left the room, Chris' snores still emanating from the other bedroom, and staggered down the stairs, trying to block out the images still in his head. Shaking himself one more time, he entered the living room, a modest little space with a fireplace and two sofas, Eliza sat on one, drinking tea and on the other an Asian man, short but stocky with a clipped moustache and wearing an old green army uniform , who stood up as Mark entered and offered his hand.

"Mark this is…"Eliza began but Mark quickly interrupted, saying firmly.

"Eliza we need to go. Go wake Chris up and we can be on the road within the next ten minutes."

"Aren't you going to thank our host? This is Sergeant Gage Thapa" Eliza said with a frown, a disapproving look on her face as she set her teacup down.

Mark nodded, anger in his eyes as he turned to the sergeant.

"Of course Mr Thapa, I forgot my manners. I've a lot to thank you for, but what should I start with, eh? Oh yeah, thanks for stopping those walkers overrunning the school, yeah thanks mate, good one there…Also, I have to thank you for saving all those kids and their teachers, good idea to let them shoot themselves. And of course, you did a great job of saving my son didn't you? Because of you he's out there on that playground, a fucking bullet hole in his head! Does that make you feel good eh? That you let all those kids die?!"

"Mark stop!" Eliza cried, standing up to confront him, but he only shook his head.

"Shut it Eliza! This little fuck here could have saved them all, if he had only fucking…"

At this point Gage spoke, the short Asian man showing no anger at Mark's words, only a calm even tone.

"Look I understand your going through a hard time…Mark is it? I understand exactly what you…"

He never finished his sentence as Mark suddenly lunged forward and grabbed the other man, shoving him into the wall. Instantly there was the sound of a blade being drawn and Mark felt a tip of cold steel pressed to his neck, looking down to see Gage holding a large bladed curved knife to his throat and he took his hands off him. The blade was quickly sheathed again and Gage smiled as if it had never happened.

"Now if your frigging finished take a seat" Eliza demanded, practically manhandling Mark onto the sofa next to her as Gage sat down and poured him a cup from a porcelain teapot, offering him it. Mark took it grudgingly and listened as Gage began to speak.

"I believe I need to introduce myself Mark, for your benefit at least. As your friend Eliza told you, my name is Gage Thapa, former sergeant in the Duke of Edinburgh's Own 7th Gurkha Rifles. And, as I told you a minute ago, I know about your son's death and ,trust me, I am very sorry that it happened and, if I could, I would have done all in my power to stop the…nightmare ,at that school. I know full well what it is like to lose your only son."

As he said this he stood up and went over to the mantelpiece, motioning for Mark to join him. As he came over, Mark saw the photos laid out, an old wedding photo of Gage in his uniform with a smiling bride, and then one of a grinning two year old boy on a tricycle, the same boy at around ten years old in the uniform of the local school, the same one Thomas had gone to. Finally the boy, who Mark could now see as Gage's son due to the uncanny resemblance, was in one more photo, dressed in the dress uniform he had seen upstairs, a broad smile on his face as he stood next to his father.

"That was the proudest day of my life." Gage said softly. "I remember how excited he was when he got into the regiment, the same as I had been in. My wife and I went to wave him off when he went to Afghanistan, she cried so much, but she was so proud…"

He tailed off, running his hand over the silver badge on the black beret next to the photo.

"When we got that letter from his CO, I just remember being numb, as if it hadn't happened. It was quick, his mates said. A sniper shot him during a fire fight, pierced his helmet. He was dead before the others even knew… My wife left soon after that, back to the old country. Can't really blame her. I was a wreck for a year or so, grief does that to you, sat in the pub getting wasted or getting into fights in places a man like me shouldn't be in. In a weird way this whole disaster saved me, gave me purpose in life when I thought there was no way to go on."

Mark felt his heart go out to this man, who had lost so much yet still had a smile on his face.

"I…" he began, wanting to apologise to Gage, but the other man just shook his head.

"It's fine, I was like that when Ganju died. I almost punched my best mate when he came around after the funeral. But you need to focus that grief, put it to one side until you're ready to deal with it properly, then finally look at yourself and be able to grieve, and then move on, but still remember them forever."

Mark nodded, feeling a bit foolish now as he sat down.

"Anyway…" Eliza said, changing the subject. "Gage was telling me he wanted to join us. Like a fourth musketeer."

Mark grinned for what felt like the first time in ages.

"So what do you bring to the table then sergeant?"

Gage smiled and reached behind his chair.

"This for a start…" and pulled a long barrelled rifle from behind him, placing it on the coffee table after removing the magazine.

"Whoa…" Mark said softly as Gage spoke again.

"That there is an L1A1 Self Loading Rifle. Saw me through over ten years of service until I retired twenty years ago. Kept it clean and ready for action ever since."

"How did you get this?" Eliza said, peering to look closer at the bulky weapon and Gage grinned.

"Let's just say I had a good friend at the barracks. It feels good to get the old girl back in action."

Peering closer Mark noticed two separate phrases scratched into the wooden stock. Reading the first out his eyes widened.

"Tumbledown 14th June 1982-FI. You fought in the Falklands?"

"Well, I don't like to brag but yes, I was there. Didn't see a huge amount of action though. Seems the Argies thought we were sword wielding monsters who beheaded prisoners so they turned tail and ran when they heard us coming…"

He laughed, and then pointed to the inscription below that.

"Now, that was the real battle for me. Northern Ireland 1988. Almost got my legs blown off by an IRA grenade the first week and we were in fire fights practically every other day for the whole tour."

Mark frowned.

"Alright, you've got military experience but so do a lot of those soldiers off the news and I heard they didn't handle all that well against the walkers. You do know how to kill them I hope? Headshots?"

Gage looked genuinely surprised when Mark said that, leaning forward in interest.

"Really? I was always taught to go for headshots anyway, guess that's what comes of only having a semi auto weapon. Not like those high tech assault rifles the boys out there have now. And of course, I always have this, my kukri."

He proudly drew his blade from his sheath and handed it to Eliza, who studied the blade inetently.

"So have you got supplies here then?" she said as she studied the intricate design on the handle.

"Loads. Food, water, and a whole load of my old army kit. Feel free to take what you need, that is, if I can join your little band? Safety in numbers and all that…"

"Of course." Said a voice from across the room, and all three of them turned to see Chris, fully dressed, rubbing his bruised head slightly as he stood in the doorway.

Gage smiled.

"Well we should get moving then. Those 'walkers' from the school will be making their way here soon. I forgot to lock the gate when we ran from there. Now is it Chris? Your sister told me about you. I'm Gage Thapa."

As Chris absently shook the Gurkha's meaty hand Mark stood up to grab his stuff from upstairs, saying.

"Look, I know you're in our group and all Gage but, have you got some kind of transport? Because I know those walkers are slow but they're bloody persistent."

The old soldier smiled.

"I have just the thing."

Ten minutes later and all four were stood on the deserted street outside, staring at Gage's transport.

"Bit vintage isn't it?" Eliza said, absently glancing up and down the street.

"So was the van though." Chris replied. "Plus this thing looks like it could handle better off road."

"Yes." Gage agreed, grinning broadly as he unlocked the ancient vehicle. "I bought this Land Rover off a friend in the regiment when they amalgamated it with a few other units. Still kept the old paintwork and everything. Anyway it's got a full tank so it should be enough for us to get to…"

"Southampton." Chris finished for him, pulling down the tailgate at the back and climbing in, Mark quickly following, his crossbow loaded and ready.

"I get to go shotgun it seems." Eliza said with a laugh as Gage placed his rifle behind the driver's seat, all the other supplies already crammed into the back with Mark and Chris, along with Gage's son's uniform, carefully folded up and placed in a pile with his photos.

As she opened the door Gage turned to her, handing her a large black pistol.

"You might as well take my old sidearm. It's the same as your brothers and I've got a ton of ammo but, just be careful with it ok? Hop in."

As Eliza climbed in Gage looked back at his house for a second, before placing his son's black beret on his head, a tear in his eye as he gave the house a final salute and then climbed into the driver's seat and closed the door.

He turned to the two in the back as the roar of jet engines filled the air, and three Eurofighters screamed overhead, trailing smoke.

"Next stop Southampton!"


	12. Chapter 12- Checkpoint Chat

As Gage pulled the Land Rover out of the road, Chris saw walkers shambling towards the sound of the truck ,streaming out of the abandoned school. As they moved away towards larger roads, every so often passing a slightly dazed walking corpse, Chris saw a soldier in a gas mask using a flamethrower on the walkers, the rest of his squad behind all in gas masks and carrying assault rifles,followed by the imposing bulk of a tank. As one of the burning corpses approached him, he fumbled for his sidearm and put a bullet in its head. His comrade turned and cocked his head as if to say "What the fuck?" The first soldier just shrugged and returned to using his flamethrower, and merely waved at the truck as they roared past.

Gage was driving the nearly antique vehicle for several miles without incident, until they were met by a long a queue of cars piled up for miles,the ugly form of a concrete and barbed wire military checkpoint just visible in the distance further down the street, the honking of horns beeping out as a military helicopter whirred over, the pilot shouting something from a loudspeaker.

"Haven't seen this sort of thing for years…" Gage laughed, but Chris saw an uneasy look in his eye as the old Gurkha placed a hand on the stock of his rifle.

"It's gonna be a long ride." Chris sighed.

Mark smiled distantly at him, he wasn't able to bring himself to laugh yet, but he'd get there eventually. Chris stared out of the window as the cars slowly trickled through the checkpoint. Many would have thought it was over now, but Chris knew it would have spread elsewhere. The worst was yet to come; it couldn't leave this much destruction in such a small area and then be contained just like that. Chris didn't even know where it originated, how long ago all this had really started or why. For the most part, he didn't want to know. Because he, Mark and Eliza knew something everyone else didn't: everyone's infected. Chris knew this couldn't be stopped, no matter what those soldiers out there threw at it.

They'd been sat in the queue for almost three hours, bored to tears when Chris heard a knock on the side of the truck. Chris opened the doors at the back, expecting another group of armed police, who had been wandering up and down the queue for what felt like ages, casting uneasy glances to the fires just visible from central London. Instead he was met by a girl with long black hair and a fringe that swept across her forehead, she was good looking, certainly, but Chris would have defined her as something more like "cute" she had a very slight frame, a small nose and a few faint freckles around her cheeks, a pair of thin black-rimmed glasses over her large deep brown eyes.

"Can I help you?" Chris asked, slightly confrontationally.

"Yeah, you can help me build a time machine and stop all this." She said, with a lopsided half-smile.

"Well, what do you want then?" He asked.

"I want to ride you." Then she pondered what she said and shook her head, rolling her eyes at her own foolishness.

"I mean, I want a ride with you." She corrected.

"Just through the checkpoint. They're not letting anyone through unless they're in a group. Trust me I tried, but those squaddies weren't gonna let me through for anything. I've knocked on every car down this goddamned queue, no one's buying it." She added, hastily.

"Hold on." Chris said.

Chris moved to the front.

"Who is it?" Gage asked, instinctively reaching for his kukri, but instantly stopping himself.

"A girl, she wants a ride with us." Chris said.

Gage nodded, and even Mark looked slightly less dazed at the prospect of another person.

"Ok. She can stay with us as long as she wants." The old soldier said.

Chris opened the back doors again.

"Hop in." Chris said, with a grin.

She didn't move. She looked shocked.

"I said get in." He repeated, his voice slightly firmer but still polite.

She climbed in the back and her eyes met Eliza's. Chris noticed something in that look. Lust, probably. Eliza still got more attention from women than Chris and Mark combined ever did. Eliza gave the girl her cheeky smile that could pretty much win anyone over. Chris decided to take notes on Eliza's methods in future.

"What's your name?" Chris asked.

The girl looked at him like he'd just said something incredibly stupid.

"We're going to be here a while. Might it be worth at least pretending to know you for the checkpoint? They've seen you already and they're going to ask us about you." He said. "Or would you rather stick here for a few more hours?"

"Alexis. But my friends called me Lexi. Well, before they decided that it was a better idea to try and eat my brains." She replied. "What's yours?"

"I'm Chris, and that girl you're eyeing up is my sister, Eliza." He replied.

Lexi blushed a little.

Eliza smiled.

"Chris, don't torture the poor girl. She's kinda cute." Eliza said.

Lexi blushed even more now.

"I wasn't trying to be mean. Sorry." Chris apologised.

"It's fine." Lexi smiled. "I just didn't know it was that obvious. I hadn't even come out to my family and friends before all this." She explained.

"It was just the look." Chris said. "I think observation's my strong point." He said with a smile. "As for the two up front, that's Gage and that handsome devil theres Mark…"

Waving awkwardly at the two men up front, she turned back to Chris

"So, what's your story then?" Lexi asked.

"Which one?"

"All of them."

Chris sighed, and glanced at Eliza, who nodded gently at him, as if to say 'Go on'.

"Well, we've lived around here our whole lives. Our parents died when I was 17. Car crash. Dad had got this great new car and he and mum left us with friends whilst they went for a quick spin around the estate. Never came back. Eliza was no older than nine at the time. I was just about old enough to care for her myself. The locals were great to us, they put on fundraisers to try and raise money for us to keep up on the rent and not have to go into social care. I quit school and went into a full time job to try and provide for Eliza. I was in computer repair, worked for a company at first, met my best mate Mark there. Anyway, the company we worked for went bust. We started our own business together and we'd been making quite a comfortable living, considering us two have no real qualifications. We were in quite high demand around the local area. One day we get a call from this old guy, we go over the next day and the guy's really sick. I could tell he was dying; he looked like a skeleton with skin. I called for an ambulance. The old man dies before they arrive. A few days later, I'm out at a restaurant on a date. She turns up late, bleeding all over the place. I sit her down and try to find out what happened. She says some crazy guy bit her. She dies right there in front of me and these things come through the windows eating everyone in sight. I'm lucky I got out." Chris said, a faint tear in his eye and he shivered. He would never really forget that night.

"Jesus." Lexi muttered.

"Yourself?" Chris asked.

"Sheltered daughter of a rich family, daddy's little princess and all that. I have some friends round for my 21st. We're having pillow fights in our underwear, you know, girly stuff like that and we notice that one of us has a bite-mark. We tend to her like they were saying on the news, I go down to get some disinfectant and stuff, next thing I know, she's eating my friends on the floor of my room. I run downstairs to get my parents and Dad's got one on top of him, Mum's screaming bloody murder. Something grabs her and all I can hear is her screams. I got the hell out right then. Fucking walkers, man." She added.

"Do you think this is it? That we're safe?" Lexi asked.

"No. In fact, I know that this isn't anywhere near over. This is the calm before the storm." Chris said.

"How do you know?"

"Observation's my strong point. We're all infected already. The bite doesn't infect you. It just kills you."

"What? How did you find that out?"

"We found a walker. Infected. Walker. Whatever you want to call it. He'd hung himself with a belt. I checked him over. We all did. He hadn't been bitten." Chris explained.

"No matter how we die we turn?" Lexi asked.

"Unless it destroys the brain. That's how you kill these things, so logically a bullet to the head is the only way to prevent coming back." Chris said.

Lexi looked destroyed. Chris would never forget the terrified look in her eyes that replaced her usual twinkle.

Lexi moved into Chris and hugged him, sobbing quietly. Chris wrapped his arms around her in return and didn't say a word.


	13. Chapter 13- Highway To Hell

The grey line of the M3 motorway seemed endless to Mark as he kept the Land Rover powering on, the old engine still roaring along at a good forty miles an hour. Since leaving the final checkpoints on the London outskirts far behind, it had been a fast journey. Somehow he had expected more traffic, or at least to be more hindered by it. After a half an hour wait near the outskirts of Basingstoke, during which lines of soldiers in gasmasks had checked each vehicle for anybody displaying bites, it had been uneventful. Mark had heard a few shots further down the line, but had only dismissed them as one of the hundreds of over packed cars backfiring. The soldiers had merely glanced at the impressive amount of weaponry their group had on offer, only one particularly officious officer looked like he was going to cause a problem, until he saw Gage absently running a finger over his kukri.

At the moment the old soldier was asleep in the back, his head in his lap as he sat back, whilist Eliza and Lexi were deep in discussion about whether there might be a cruise ship heading to the Caribbean docked in Southampton they could hop on. As they laughed amongst themselves, Mark felt a small grin coming to his face. Maybe everything was going to be alright. Next to him Chris was checking over a battered road atlas.

"Only another twenty miles to Southampton." He declared with a smile. "From there, it's just a mile or so to the port then…"

He let that point hang, but Mark was content to not worry about the future. They were all alive. That was all that mattered.

"Shit…" he muttered as he looked in the side mirror.

Behind them a thick column of smoke rose into the air from the direction of Basingstoke, and Mark saw Chris look back solemnly, a grim frown on his face.

"Poor bastards." He said softly. "Anyway, an hour from now we'll be out of this hell and off to some tropical paradise!" he added with a half-smile.

They both paused as a squadron of jets passed low overhead, and Mark had to swerve to avoid a stalled car in the middle of the road, the rest of the traffic just skirting around it.

"Was there a…"

Chris only nodded slowly. They had both seen the blood on the windows of the stalled vehicle.

Mark quickly changed the subject as a column of green canvas backed army trucks rumbled past, soldiers looking out the back grimly, clutching their rifles.

"Is Gage still asleep?"

Chris grinned.

"Yeah, can't blame the old guy. He's the reason we survived all that shit back there. I just hope his dreams are better than our reality…"

But, for Gage, his dreams only opened the door to more nightamres, ones he thought he had forgotten years ago. And, as he heard the roar of jets overhead, he was back there. Mount Tumbledown, the Falkands, 14th June 1982.

_The Argentine jets came down low for another pass, just visible in the almost pitch black night. Two of them, Super Etentards, screaming over the heads of the soldiers below. Gage heard the other members of his squad, all shouting as the jets turned back, firing off a barrage of missiles, causing the entire squad to dive behind the huge boulders littering the rocky landscape as light from the explosions lit up the crouched Gurkha's in blasts of orange and red._

"_Fucking Argies!" roared his squad mate, a thickset corporal by the name of Bahadaur Padam, reloading his rifle and firing at the Argentine positions further up the hill._

"_Where's the tank support?" Gage said, crawling along the trench to where the group leader, Lieutenant Smith, was watching the enemy positions beyond through bincoulouars, keeping low as the jets continued to roar overhead._

_The lieutenant only had time to turn before he was lost in the blast of a mortar stike, his remains scattering into the mud, rounds staring to slam into the Gurkha positions._

"_Shit, he's dead!" shouted another soldier as they futiley fired up the hill, mortar rounds continuing to thud into the grass around them._

"_We need to move!" Padam ordered, but his next words were drowned out by the thunder of heavy guns from the nearby shoreline, as the two battleships HMS Yarmouth and HMS Active bombarded the Argentine strongpoint._

"_Yes!" Gage heard himself whooping, watching the explosions blossoming up the hill, and hearing the rumble of tanks thundering to reinforce them._

"_Took their time." Padam said with a laugh, as the crackle of small arms fire was audible from the other side of the hill, the Royal Marines of 42 Commando already pushing forward. "Take it to them!" he cried, then drew his kukri, the blade glinting in the light of the explosions beyond._

"_Aiyo gurkhali!" he screamed, and then charged into the gun smoke._

Gage awoke with a jolt, and found he had drawn his kukri, the blade just in front of his face. Beside him Eliza and Lexi looked on with a mixture of fear and bemusement.

Eliza put a hand on his shoulder, and Gage took a breath.

"What's up?" she said softly, not wanting to disturb Mark and Chris up front who were just laughing at some old joke. She didn't want them to have to worry about anything until Southampton.

Gage shook his head.

"Nothing, nothing. Just had a little fright, that's all. Old memories…"

Eliza nodded. All of them had things they never wanted to think about again. She just hoped once they were on a ship out of here they could forget all this.

Up front Mark and Chris were laughing together for what felt like the first time in a long while, some dirty joke Chris had got off the internet years ago and had never forgotten ,something about onions. Mark dint care really mind. To him it was still as hilarious as the first time he told it. He only stopped laughing when a familiar guitar intro came on the radio.

"Holy shit." He said with a grin. "Turn it up man!"

Chris laughed and turned up the radio, Mark singing along tunelessly as they drove on.

"I'm on the highway to hell! Highway to hell. I'm on the highway to hell!" he sang, and soon Chris was joining in, strumming an imaginary air guitar.

"Man, I cannot begin to describe how much I love this song…" Mark said, and Chris laughed.

"Remember when you tried to learn this on your dad's old guitar and practically broke your fingers, you practised that much."

Mark snorted.

"I would have had it as well, if the frigging strings hadn't snapped!"

As the song's chorus blasted out again, Mark smiled broadly, ignoring the Chinook helicopters whirring over the motorway, and the explosions in the distance. They were alive, about to leave this walker infested country, and they had a kick ass soundtrack to boot.

And, as they entered the end of a long queue on the motorway junction leading into the sprawl of Southampton, flanked by columns of tanks and soldiers on all sides, jets and helicopters filling the blue sky above, Mark still grinned.

Maybe today wasn't as bad as it had first seemed.


	14. Chapter 14- Blood In The Water

A few minutes after their entrance through the roadblock into Southampton, Chris very quickly realised that hell had broken loose. Southampton was quite a small area really; it felt closer to a large town than a prominent city dock. Not that it mattered any more. They left the Land Rover after a few empty streets to see what was happening, checking their sides at all times, hearing explosions and gunfire from beyond, every so often a distant blaze of fire and smoke erupting from streets beyond. With all the walkers around, the vehicle had become more like a metal coffin than a means of transporting them anywhere other than their inevitable deaths, and they had already turned off the main route to the port, thinking they could find a safer route.

They were wrong.

There were so many walkers descending upon their next meals as they ran toward the port that it was impossible to tell who was dying, who was dead, and who was undead apart, all melding into a mass of bodies shuffling about or rolling on the tarmac amongst abandoned cars and trashed police roadblocks.

Everything on the streets had become a mass of rotting flesh eaters tearing into living things and spilling blood, the death was so dense that the streets had been more or less repainted red. Screams of the dying and the growls and moans of the undead merged into a horrifying sound that carried for miles and would haunt the rest of Chris' nightmares, if he lived long enough to have them again. While Chris was distracted by his thoughts, a walker had grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, just unable to bite him momentarily. Another second's hesitation and he'd be dead. Chris fumbled for his pistol and put a bullet in the walker's head, looking away as it fell back onot the tarmac. He ran to catch up to the others who had left him behind in the panic, Gage at the front with his rifle out, firing at anything that shambled too close, whilst Mark grabbed a pistol from a walker in blood stained riot armour after putting a bolt in its pale face, straight through the cracked plastic visor.

Lexi was trying to distance herself from the horrors she was witnessing, she'd allow herself to break down later if she needed it, but she needed to be strong for now. Walkers were everywhere. Chris, Mark and Eliza were cutting them down with their pistols if they got too close, but still they were running as dead hands reached out to grab them. Eliza wasn't as good a shot as the others though, having less experience with a gun than anyone else in the group aside from Lexi who still hadn't touched one, and a few walkers still stumbled at them with bullets in their shoulders or chest before Gage's accurate rifle fire put them down. The rest of the group had surrounded Lexi since she didn't have a weapon fo her own beyond a small crowbar Mark had thrown at her a few seconds ago. The rest of the group except for Chris, Lexi realised.

"Fuck! Where's Chris?" Lexi shouted over the gunshots.

The group halted, and stood back to back against the horde.

Chris shot his way through the walkers; he couldn't help but feel he was going to die here with the countless others. The blood was so thick in the air that Chris could taste it in the back of his throat, the smell of decay was overpowering, making Chris dizzy. He fired wildly; he was almost beyond help now. He fell as a walker dragged him to the ground. Chris felt its grip loosen, but didn't hear a gunshot. He saw Gage holding his rifle; the stock was covered in blood. A shot had obviously been too much of a risk. Chris pulled himself up and reloaded his pistol while Gage fired into the walkers that had been following him, then ramming another magazine into his weapon. They began to hear muffled assault rifle shots from further down the road.

"Sounds military." Chris said.

"Be careful. It doesn't sound like they're going for the heads." Gage warned.

"You think they've been ordered to shoot everyone?" Chris asked.

"It's likely, since this disease seems so infectious and there are so many walkers around. They'll probably all be executed themselves when they get back to base. Stories get out and it's too easy to hide a bite." Gage said.

"The others?" Chris asked.

"They're past all this, already waiting at the docks after I sent them ahead. Sounds like something's brewing down there"

The thud of the distant gunfire was like a gentle warning until they got closer, all soldiers had obviously been ordered to wear gas masks in case the disease was airborne, or maybe if they decided nerve gas might be a better tactic. Chris watched as they rounded up survivors at a barricade further down the street and riddled them with bullets mercilessly. They didn't care that these people were innocent anymore, or that some of their victims were children or elderly, or even that they were executing some whilst their families watched and screamed as though they had felt the pain of each bullet. The howls were no longer inhuman, but very human and anguished. Chris and Gage snuck past the soldiers through back alleys. They both very much wanted to do something, but they also knew they would be shot to pieces in a second if they tried.

They eventually reached the dock to see Eliza, Lexi and Mark surrounded by other people, all shoving forward against lines of riot police and soldiers, who savagely beat back any who tried to rush the barricades erected at the waterfront, a few warning shots echoing above their heads. Out on the water itself, all manner of ships; cruise liners, container ships, passenger ferries, all jostled for space, people hurling themselves into the roiling waters to escape the madness on the seafront, insults and projectiles futilely hurled out at the lucky few crammed aboard the ships heading out to sea, a few listing dangerously to one side as they tried to steam away.

Further out loomed a huge aircraft carrier, the HMS Ark Royal, along with a line of naval destroyers while jets and Royal Navy helicopters roared low overhead. As more shots rang out nearby, Chris turned to Gage, who was levelling his rifle at anyone who came too near the group, most people keeping away from the burly soldier.

"Why are we all just standing here?" he said, his pistol held tightly in both hands as he looked out to sea. "With all those monsters only a few streets away. Why don't those soldiers just shoot us all like they did everyone else!" he bellowed, and Gage quickly shushed him as other people, and a few soldiers and armed police, cast worried glances in their direction.

"Because hope is altogether more powerful than fear." The Gurkha whispered softly. "And the hope that one of those ships out there might be their ticket out of this nightmare is much better at keeping order than the prospect of a bullet in the head. Those soldiers up there probably don't have enough ammo anyway…" he added with a solemn frown.

"Hopefully those undead fuckers will stay away this time." Lexi said from next to Chris, nervously watching as a group of people nearby attempted to climb the metal fences by the waterfront and were shot down by panicked riot police, the survivors dragged off by a mob of soldiers, lined up by the edge of the pier and shot in the head one by one, their bodies splashing into the water below.

They all looked out at the water as the executed civilian's bodies floated to the surface. It had been tinted a dark red colour now, and a few undead bobbed on the waves, the soldiers on the pier not even bothering to shoot them now while seagulls pecked and tore at the corpses. Every ship in sight was on fire or boxed in by the other vessels attempting to leave, with the exception of a huge cargo ship, beached by the waterfront, sitting silently near the end of a long pier. The back was open, but the contents of the ship were further back than they could see. They stared at it.

"It's too big to even try and use and those fuckers out there will probably shoot us down or blow us out the water before we could get away." Chris said, guiltily.

"It's not your fault, mate. You didn't know this would be our greeting." Mark replied, placing a hand on his shoulder.

As they looked at the large ship Chris began to notice smaller details, like the way the red paint was flaking off and showing the rusted hull of the ship, or the birds circling above the empty decks. Chris' eyes widened as the cargo emerged. A group of at least several hundred walkers in ragged clothing shambled out of the surf, moaning at the crowds packed on the waterfront. They sounded hungry…


	15. Chapter 15- Plague Ship

As the walkers shambled out of the container ship into the sunshine, their moans carrying from further down the waterfront, Chris and the others were already trying to escape.

"We have to move." Gage hissed, keeping his voice low. "Once those walkers get nearer, then all hells going to…"

He was interrupted as a woman nearby, clutching her baby to her chest, looked in their direction, and then toward the beached ship beyond. For a second her face was set in a comical look of surprise, and then she pointed with her free hand and started screaming.

All over, more people were noticing, and then the shout went up, above the roar of engines and orders from soldiers and police, one deafening howl.

"Walkers!"

The crowd surged forward, the undead now only a hundred metres away, their moans carrying on the cold sea breeze, dead eyes sizing up the clustered mob of refugees at the dock. The soldiers tried to force the terrified crowd back, riot police beating down anyone who tried to pass them, but it just wasn't enough. Already the police looked to be breaking, and a helicopter now soared low over.

"Please disperse!" came the garbled sound of a loudspeaker from the helicopter. "The authorities have everything in hand! Failure to comply with…"

The rest of the pilot's message was lost as the walkers were soon too close for the crowd to take, and there was a mass surge towards the barricades, the riot police retreating back or being trampled by the baying mob. Chris and the others were forced into the crowd once again, Mark almost disappearing underneath before Lexi grabbed him and they attempted to make their way through.

"Back! Back! All of you!" bellowed a soldier with a megaphone by the barricade up ahead, and when a burst of warning shots rang out overhead, Mark hoped that, maybe, these people might come to their senses.

He turned to Chris, who already had his gun out, watching the walkers shamble closer, and gave him a weak smile, despite the dead already within fifty metres of them. But then another voice was shouting, a female voice, and Mark's smile died.

"Hey, those people down there are getting away!"

As the entire hundred strong crowd paused and looked, Mark and the others looked with them. Along the waterfront, past a flimsy looking metal fence topped with barbed wire, another crowd were organised into orderly queues, waiting in line for a row of Chinook transport helicopters, taking off from the tarmac in whirls of grit and flecks of concrete, headed for the safety of the ships beyond.

"We need to…!" Mark heard Gage shouting, but by then it was too late. The crowd broke off from its rush at the barricades in front of them and turned left, running for the other fence, the screams of those at the front being crushed by those behind hammering into Mark's ears.

He couldn't hear the others, could only see Gage grappling with two burly men trying to grab his rifle, Lexi and Eliza almost being swept away by the surging mass of people and Chris standing at the edge of it all, a shell shocked look on his face, and the walkers still advancing.

In a daze, Mark watched as the walkers shambled forward, raised his gun and aimed at the closest.

He never had the chance to fire.

With a howling moan and shrieks of pain, another group of walkers suddenly shambled in from another street, clambering over police cars and abandoned vehicles, tearing into the stragglers at the back. That's when the crowd broke.

Running in all directions, some for the safety of the helicopters beyond, others still running at the barricade by the water. And yet most just ran in all direction, knocking into one another, lashing out, kicking others to the floor in their haste to escape. Mark took a punch to the jaw as he tried to find the others, then was almost swept away as two armoured police shoved past, carrying their screaming comrade between them, his legs crushed. Blood .Shouting.

It was hell.

Still the walkers were advancing, and then the barricade collapsed. Part of the mob had forced their way forward, many now displaying obvious bite marks, overwhelming the gathered soldiers with sheer numbers. Mark felt a bullet fly past and hit somebody, a pale faced young soldier looking in horror at his smoking rifle before three men pushed him to the floor and staring beating him, seemingly for no real reason other than blind fear.

Mark grabbed Lexi as she fell into him, hugging her close as Gage joined them, his kukri out and coated in blood.

"We need to move!" Lexi said, nervously hefting her crowbar in her hands, barely staying upright.

And with that the group, with Mark at its head, the crossbow on his back smacking painfully into his legs, was sprinting across the waterfront, away from the packs of walkers now drifting in from the city itself, the remains of the refugees who hadn't made it this far.

"To the helicopters?" Lexi said, panting as they ran.

"No…" Mark began, and, as if to prove his point, a Chinook whirred over, spinning wildly, desperate refugees clinging onto the sides even as it dipped low and slammed into the side of a packed cruise ship, sending up a column of smoke and flame.

"No." Mark repeated, having to shout over the screams of the crowd beyond. "We go back to the car, there's no escaping this nightmare..." he added grimly.

With that Mark led the way back, pushing through the desperate crowds, back into the city itself. That plan by Mark was actually what saved them, as a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter hovered low over the fence between the two sides of the waterfront, the mob deaf to its crew's orders.

They all flinched at the sound of machine gun fire from further down, but most of the group just kept their eyes on the street up ahead, surprisingly walker free for now. Only Mark and Eliza risked a look back, and both wished they hadn't.

The helicopter had opened its right side door and opened up with a heavy machine gun, splattering the grey concrete waterfront with splashes of crimson as it tore the screaming refugees to shreds. The whole evacuation was falling apart, the walkers almost completely unopposed as they devoured the crowd before them, any that didn't fall to them now being shot down by the soldiers at the waterfront, before they too were the targets of the undead's insatiable hunger.

As they reached the safety of the road beyond, they paused for a second, all panting heavily, keeping a watch out for stray undead. Eliza was the first to speak, wincing at nearby explosions and screams of terror.

"What's it like back there?"

Climbing on top of a van lying on its side, Mark looked back at the port.

The crowd was still there, but now the walkers were upon them, people trying to run before being dragged down and devoured. He saw the mother from earlier, her baby still in hand, take one look at the horde and leap into the sea, moments before a large ferry roared past, its engines squealing in protest as its captain tried to take it into open water.

It was just turning; the tiny forms of figures packed onto the sides just visible, when a missile hit the side and a devastating explosion filled the air. For a second Mark was struck dumb, and then he saw the flight of F-35 jets screaming over the harbour, releasing missiles and rockets into the packed harbour below.

"Like shooting fish in a barrel." Mark said grimly as the jets kept making passes over the port, sinking ships crammed with refugees, bombing the crowds huddled along the waterfront. The crowd up ahead were next to go, as a devastating bombardment came down upon them from the Royal Navy ships anchored out to sea, the whole group, soldiers, police, civilians and walkers alike turned to fiery skeletons in seconds.

"Why are they doing this!" he said as Gage clambered up, the old soldier about to say something before he saw the massacre beyond.

"It's a mercy really." The old soldier said after a minute, explosions still rocketing out beyond. "Better death by rockets instantly than a slow devouring…"

And with that he turned, gently but firmly pulling Mark away from watching the scene beyond. The group was soon running again, past empty warehouses and burning industrial units, a few lone helicopters visible in the skies above, still broadcasting the message to make for the port, even as those who had heeded that message perished in smoke and flame.


	16. Chapter 16- After The Storm

Everything seemed to go in slow motion for Chris, he almost couldn't move, the intense heat from the burning city was the only thing that stopped him from collapsing. The weight of everything he'd witnessed recently was bearing down on his shoulders, making it almost impossible for him to drag his legs forwards and keep up with the others, running from the death and destruction falling from the sky. He was falling behind, almost giving up. An explosion thrust Chris forward. He was far ahead enough that the blast didn't kill him, but the flames licked across his body, the heat was immense. Chris pulled himself up and ran towards his friends who had just reached the Land Rover. They got in and pulled away as another explosion rocked the vehicle violently,the scream of a jet fighter overhead hammering at his ears.

Chris saw the faces of the people he'd seen killed by the soldiers, the faces of the people being eaten by the walkers in the restaurant, the face of the old man as he died, and finally Hannah's face, pale, serene and beautiful after she had just died. Chris wanted to cry. He choked it back, screams of the dead resonating through his mind. Chris heard distant chatter, but his eyelids were heavy and he fell asleep in the back of the Land Rover.

* * *

When he woke up, the first thing he saw were Lexi and Eliza kissing each other. He sat upright and hit his head on the roof. Lexi and Eliza jumped away from each other and straightened up.

"Fuck." Chris grimaced.

The two girls just looked at him, guiltily.

"As you were." Chris mumbled, with a faint smile, looking out the back at the scenery passing him, the empty highway strewn with abandoned cars and the odd shambling walker stretching out far behind them.

Straining his eyes, Chris thought he could make out smoke on the distant horizon, the last death throes of Southampton far behind.

Eliza and Lexi looked at each other awkwardly and settled for just cuddling. It turned out that Chris had been asleep for hours. He didn't know where they were headed, but they had been travelling a long time and the daylight wouldn't last much longer. As Gage turned off the empty motorway, they saw a large open field that had been used as a camping resort. There was a large building for tent hire and check-in. The group decided that this would be an ideal place to stay for the night. Gage pulled the Land Rover into the centre of the field whilst the others got out and headed for the tent hire building, weapons drawn.

* * *

They opened the door to find that the building had no windows, and with the afternoon sun fading, they had to be fast.

"Mark, cover the entrance, mate." Chris said, pistol held out in front of him.

Mark nodded, keeping his pistol in hand, crossbow on his back loaded and ready

Chris took point, being the most skilled with a pistol compared to Eliza and Lexi.

Lexi was tucked in between the two siblings and had her crowbar clenched tightly in her hands. The handle had a slightly rusted texture due to the blood and gristle that had dried on it and Lexi didn't like holding it, but she knew she had to. Meanwhile Chris was running his hand across the wall in hopes of finding a light switch. The entire building seemed completely silent with the exception of their footsteps; the click of their boots against the cold concrete floor was amplified by the silence and echoed across the halls. Chris found the light switch and sighed with relief. He pressed it and the overhead lights flickered and buzzed. Chris saw another figure hunched over, he couldn't make it out with the flickering lights, but he called out to make sure it wasn't human. It wasn't. The creature looked up at him, staring with its dead eyes, not really seeing him. Chris took Lexi's crowbar, he didn't want to make too much sound. He brought it down on the walker's head before it had a chance to react to him. It fell, and its skull cracked. Chris took another swing, crushing its skull, parts of its flattened brain seeping out through the openings in its head. The lights finally stopped flickering and came on properly. Chris sighed.

"So now the damned lights come on." He said, laughing.

He handed Lexi the crowbar and they moved on, passing the carcass that the walker had been feasting on, a reddish pink mess of blood and muscle, the stench was unbearable as Chris quickly put a bullet between its eyes, just in case. They hurried forwards and found a darkened storage room full of two-man pop-up tents.

"Let's take six. Might be worth having a few extra." Chris said.

The girls grabbed two each and made for the exit. Chris took two and switched the lights off as he left.

Mark had left the exit.

"Mark! Where are you mate?!" Chris yelled.

Mark stuck his head out from between two buildings.

"Right here. Look what I found." Mark grinned.

Chris admired the strength Mark had found to continue on like this after losing everything he loved. Chris needed Mark to have the will to carry on; otherwise Chris would have long since given up. Mark dragged a pile of mesh fencing out from the alley he'd found it in. Chris' grin almost mirrored Mark's.

"Sweet. We can get a fence up." Chris said, happily.

"Exactly!" Mark exclaimed, quickly bundling up the mass of metal under his arm.

Chris threw the tents down around the field and helped Mark drag the rest of the fencing out to put it up.

Gage strolled over to Mark and Chris and smiled, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

"Doing some DIY, boys?" He laughed.

"Yeah. Just like old times, eh mate?" Chris said.

Mark nodded.

"Alicia's party. '97. That was a great night." Mark reminisced.

"Yeah. Jesus. That feels like way too long ago now." Chris said.

"Maybe for you, old man." Mark said, slapping Chris' balding spot.

"Fuck off." Chris laughed as he said it, no hostility in his words at all.

"Let's see if we can get a fire going and get a few beers." Mark said.

Chris laughed and shook his head incredulously.

"Let's go then." Chris said.

Gage laughed and started to put what was left of the fence up, hammering in stout pegs to hold it in place with the stock of his rifle.

* * *

Chris and Mark found the house the owners probably lived in, close to the end of the plot of land, a traditional cobblestone cottage bungalow, its curtains drawn and shutters pulled across. They approached the door slowly and opened it cautiously with a creak. They crouched down and entered. The two owners were stood up in the next room, definitely walkers. They hadn't noticed them yet. Chris looked at the photo of the couple that was in the entrance hall. They looked like they'd been nice people. The man had been short and portly, wearing a flat cap in the picture. He'd looked about 50. The woman was tall and thin, but hadn't aged very well, and that was just in the photo. Her face was an intricate map of tired creases, her hair a silvery white colour. The two creatures in the next room were not the same people. Not even physically anymore. It was hard for Chris to see, but it was the reality now. Plenty of good people had died already, and plenty more would continue to do so until the rest of humanity became so poisonous that it ate away at itself just like the walkers. Mark took the crossbow out and fired a bolt into the female walker's head. He reloaded and took a shot at the male, but missed.

"Shit." Mark muttered as the walker turned around.

Chris stood up and ran towards the walker, hitting it with the gun as hard as he could. The walker fell, but was still alive, or dead, or undead. Whatever it was. Chris found an electric guitar with an amp in the living room. He grabbed the amp and dropped it on the walker's head. He then took the guitar and slung it over his shoulder by the strap.

"Sweet. I always wanted one of these." Chris smiled.

"You know we're gonna have to leave that, right?" Mark said.

"If I didn't know that, I would have brought the one from my place." Chris said.

"As long as you know." Mark said, sounding just as disappointed as Chris felt.

"It's a Gibson. Best make around. This guy must have been some sort of old rocker" Chris said.

"Hell yeah, reminds me of when we wanted to start that band…" Mark said.

"Fuck, I'd almost forgotten about that!" Chris laughed.

"Yeah, but then we realised neither of us could sing so we asked my girlfriend at the time." Mark said.

"Oh yeah. And that crazy motherfucker we had on drums. Phil, right?" Chris said.

"Uh. Yeah, that was it! The guy with the hair that covered his entire face!" Mark said, getting excited at the memory.

"Yeah. Constantly stoned, wasn't he?" Chris said.

"Weren't we all back then?" Mark asked.

"Fair point." Chris nodded.

"I still miss smoking the odd joint now and then." Mark sighed.

Chris laughed.

"Me too, mate. I probably miss being good looking the most, though." Chris said.

Mark was almost in hysterics.

Chris went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and found two six-packs of beer.

"Jackpot!" Chris yelled, holding the beers above his head like a great prize.

Mark grinned.

"I think that sister of yours hit the real jackpot. I mean, damn." Mark laughed.

Chris sighed and rolled his eyes.

"The world's ended and you're still chasing anything in a skirt?" Chris asked.

"Why not?" Mark shrugged.

"I'm not gonna live much longer, might as well make sure I enjoy myself." Mark said, taking one of the six-packs out of Chris' arms.

"Yeah, but there's not going to be a whole lot of opportunity to…" Chris was cut off by the sound of Mark opening a can.

"If the human race survives this we'll need to repopulate…" Mark said, taking a swig of beer and winking.

"This is some good stuff. Still cold." Mark said.

Chris grinned.

"Let's get out there then." Chris said.

* * *

The fire was already going by the time Chris and Mark stepped out of the house. Eliza and Lexi went to meet them and lift up the fence.

Chris sat down on the grass by the fire, grabbed a can and took a sip.

Gage looked, disapproving slightly.

"What?" Chris said.

"I want you to be alive in the morning. You're only endangering yourself if you drink. That's all." Gage said.

"I know what you mean, but this is probably one of the last times I'm going to be able to have this." Chris said.

"All the more reason to show restraint and save the rest." Gage smiled.

"Just the one then." Chris said, feeling as if he had received a telling off from a parent.

Gage nodded happily.

"I don't mean to spoil your fun." Gage said.

"It's fine. Besides you're right. If this is all we're getting I should probably make it last." Chris said.

Chris strummed at the guitar for several hours, the slow, sorrowful notes echoing across the empty roads. The sun had long since set.

"It's getting late. I'll take watch; I caught a few hours in the Land Rover." Chris said.

Gage nodded, smiling, handing him his rifle with a knowing smile.

"In that case, I'll retire to bed."

"Me too. Been one hell of a day." Mark said.

"Literally." Chris remarked.

Mark laughed.

Chris stayed up until morning, having encountered nothing the entire night, sat by the dying fire with the rifle on his knees.

Eliza was the first to emerge from the tent, her hair was messed up and she looked tired.

"Good night?" Chris grinned.

Eliza looked at him for a second, confused, before she realised what he meant.

"Oh. You heard us." Eliza said.

"Yeah. I bet the others did too. You weren't exactly quiet." Chris said.

"Do you know how hard it is to stay quiet?" Eliza said.

"No, but something of mine's hard!" Mark's muffled voice proclaimed from the tent.

Chris laughed and heard Gage laughing too.

Eliza was still sat by the entrance of the tent when Lexi's arms came out and wrapped around Eliza. Lexi kissed Eliza on the cheek.

"Come back in. I'm cold." Lexi groaned, sleepily.

"Well, if you insist…" Eliza giggled, suddenly becoming animated and chasing Lexi back into the tent.

Mark exited his tent, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.

"Aw, mate. I could live a long, happy life without ever needing to see that." Chris said, pulling a disgusted face.

"What is it?" Eliza asked, from her tent.

"Let's just say Mark wasn't joking!" Chris yelled.

"Fuck off!" Mark said, blushing.

"Put some clothes on."

"Ok." Mark said, feigning disappointment, slinking back into his tent with a grin.

Once everyone was ready, they packed the tents and beer into the Land Rover. Chris left the guitar by the embers of the dying fire.

"Aren't you taking that?" Gage asked.

"It's not exactly important, is it?" Chris asked.

"It's a reminder of what used to be. It's more important than you might think." Chris nodded.

"As long as there's room."

"If there isn't, we'll make room."

Chris smiled and brought the guitar.

They drove through the morning for several hours along the deserted highway.

"Who's hungry?" Mark asked

Everyone cheered.

"Looks like we're in luck…" Mark said.

Chris looked at what Mark was talking about. A large supermarket loomed up ahead ,smoke rising from a large housing estate tucked away behind. The car park was completely empty except for a few trashed cars and wrecked police vehicles.

Gage pulled the Land Rover into a disabled parking spot.

"You're breaking the law. You could be fined, you know." Lexi joked.

"What are you going to do, call the cops?" Gage replied.

Everyone laughed.


	17. Chapter 17- Let The Games Begin

As they walked across the empty car park, Mark felt a chill pass through his bones. There was something about this place that scared him, a voice in his head telling him to turn around and just run from whatever was here. And yet, if they were going to make it back to London, which seemed to be the plan at the moment, they were going to need a lot more supplies, and this supermarket seemed the best place to stock up. Even so, as he led the way past burnt out cars and crumpled bodies, he felt that nagging sense of foreboding at the back of his mind again.

"Clean headshots." Gage said as he stopped to crouch by a body, the rest of the group halting next to him, nervously watching the emptiness beyond.

"Meaning what exactly?" Chris said as he looked down, shrugging at the horrific head wound on the corpse.

"Problem is…" Gage said calmly, turning the corpse over with the end of his rifle to reveal its face. "This is no walker."

Mark gazed down at the body, a woman, middle aged, her last expression one of shock and horror, dried blood encrusted by her forehead, where the bullet had impacted.

"So what?" Mark said in a low tone. "Maybe they mistook her for one of them?"

"Then who shot her?" Gage said, glancing around the empty car park. "Judging by the angle it must have been from the roof. High powered rifle most likely. Either way, this place isn't as abandoned as it looks. She can't have been dead for longer than an hour…"

The old soldier left that thought hanging above the group as Mark cautiously led the way forward, clutching his crossbow. Clambering over a thick concrete barrier, the word 'Police' on its sides just visible under a spattering of blood, he felt another ice cold stab of fear course through him as he saw what lay ahead of them.

Dominating the view was the huge form of the supermarket, an old styled Sainsbury's, its grey form like a sleeping giant of concrete and stone, whilst its front doors seemed the only obvious entrance inside. But, in the car park in front, it was like a scene from a warzone.

Surrounded by a perimeter of barbed wire topped metal fencing and sandbags, the remains of a quarantine zone lay before them, filled with abandoned police vehicles and military equipment, the squat form of a Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle sat in the centre by a row of green camouflage tents and empty crates. In the middle of the camp, surrounded by crumpled bodies, a ragged Union Jack flew from a spindly flagpole, marked by bullet holes.

"Holy shit…" Chris said softly as he stood by Mark, his pistol raised." What do you think happened here?"

"Seems to be some sort of quarantine zone…" Lexi said reading off a bullet riddled sign by a hastily constructed sniper position; its occupant slumped dead at his post.

"Must have been overrun by all the refugees on the way to Southampton." Eliza said thoughtfully as she examined an empty ambulance. "Only question is where are all the walkers?"

Nobody knew, and Mark only shrugged.

"All I see are bodies. Maybe the army managed to evacuate the refugees?"

Chris nodded in silent agreement as him and Gage checked the back of a blood-stained police car, a dead police officer in riot gear splayed over the bonnet, his head nothing but a bloody smear on the windscreen.

"Jackpot!" Mark heard Chris exclaim and hurried over, skirting around an overturned metal table, now useless papers and documents fluttering in the breeze around it.

As he arrived at the abandoned police car, Gage giving him a brief nod, he found Chris leaning into the car, and then suddenly appearing with a heavy black shotgun in his hands.

"Told you it was good man." Chris said with a wide grin, cradling the weapon in both hands.

Mark sighed.

"Any shells though? Because without ammo that's just going to be a very intricate club…"

Chris quickly rummaged through the boot of the vehicle and emerged after a minute with a single shotgun shell between his fingers.

"Better than nothing I guess…" he said with a shrug, and attempted to load the weapon before finally giving up and handing it to Mark, who easily managed to open the breech and slot the shell in, pumped it once then handed it back to Chris, who only smirked.

"You have totally been playing too much Battlefield man."

Mark grinned.

"What can I say? It's probably quite a good skill at the moment. Worth more than knowing how to install a new hard drive."

"And when the moment comes that one shell will be very useful…" Chris replied as Mark handed him the shotgun.

Both of them laughed, but were interrupted by Eliza, who called over to them from by the ambulance, a first aid kit under her arm.

"Hey guys, if you're finished with the bromance can one of you have a look from the top of that watchtower? Lexi found some binoculars in one of the jeeps and was wondering what it looked like from up there."

Mark swaggered over, grinning at Eliza as he walked toward the watchtower.

"What's wrong? Can't climb a ladder? Still tired after last night I guess…"

Eliza smirked and punched him on the arm as she handed him the binoculars.

"Ok ok, I'm going!" he said and clambered up to the sniper post, trying to ignore the stench emanating from the dead soldier, a bullet wound obvious in his forehead.

Waving to Chris and Gage, who were still checking over the police vehicles, he set the binoculars to his eyes, and panned his gaze over the surrounding area.

He could see the Land Rover, parked over by the road, the rest of the car park strewn with abandoned cars and then he moved his view over to the motorway beyond, where a jam of vehicles had developed by the supermarkets exit next to an empty car wash. The motorway seemed relatively clear past that, except for an overturned lorry about a hundred metres further up the road, but Mark doubted that would be a problem.

Then he saw a mass of figures shambling around the wrecked cars at the exit.

"Shit…" he said softly and quickly clambered down, to be met by Chris and Lexi, who were carrying a crate of bottled water and army ration packs between them.

"Find anything?" Lexi asked. "Because me and Chris were just thinking, for an army camp, there are no weapons or supplies of any sort? We found this in the back of a police Land Rover near the supermarket entrance…"

"No time for that." Mark said quickly, already glancing towards the direction of the car park exit, where he guessed the walkers would soon be staggering up from. They had already made a load of noise already. "We've got a big group of walkers coming our way. We've maybe got about ten minutes or so…"

Instantly Gage and Eliza were hurrying over, having heard Mark's warning.

"So what now? Do we run?" Eliza asked; hand on the pistol at her waist.

Chris shook his head.

"We can't. There's just too much potential loot in that store up there. I'm not making the mistake we made at Stan's. If we're quick we can have all the stuff out and in the car before those walkers make it here."

Gage nodded and said firmly.

"I'll get the Land Rover up here then. You go check out the supermarket and I'll meet you out here in five minutes."

Gently taking the crate from Chris and Lexi, the old soldier accepted the shotgun from Chris and passed him his rifle.

"Are you sure?" Chris said as he handed it to Lexi, who Mark remembered Gage had taught the basics of it to on the drive from Southampton, but the old soldier only grinned as he started towards the Land Rover.

"Still got the kukri." He called to them and set off at a brisk jog, the heavy crate neatly balanced in both arms.

Turning towards the supermarket, Mark checked his crossbow and, with a nod towards the others, started towards it, checking for walkers as they went.

* * *

When they reached the closed automatic doors, wooden planks and boards crudely hammered onto them, Mark turned to the others.

"Ok, we've got about five minutes if we want to play it safe. Me and Eliza will cover the back, Chris and Lexi, you take the rear. Grab what you can but don't take any stupid risks…Everybody ready?"

The others nodded grimly, weapons at the ready.

"Ok let's do this!" Mark said with a grin, hauling open the doors and stepping inside.

"Wow…gloomy." Lexi said with a slight grin as they stepped into the almost pitch black interior, the doors up ahead also boarded up, so only chinks of light came through from the room beyond.

"Power must be on…" Chris said absently, torch in one hand lighting the way forward, the only light besides the feeble glow of a lighter Lexi had produced.

"I know, I think they might…" Mark began, but froze as he saw what was shown in the bright light of Chris' torch. A human figure.

"Shit!" Mark and Chris said simultaneously, but neither had time to reach for their weapons before Mark felt a hard blow on the back of his head and stumbled, expecting at any second dead hands to reach down and grab him. Instead, as he hit the floor he heard undeniably human voices shouting, mainly Lexi and Eliza but also some other male voices, ones he had never heard before.

He only had time to see Chris struck in the face with the butt of a rifle before he blacked out onto the hard laminate floor.

* * *

Mark opened his eyes, blinking for what felt like ages before his vision finally cleared of the dark spots. Putting a hand to his head he instantly recoiled, an agonising pain registering for a single horrific second before subsiding.

Trying to take in his surroundings he began to stand up, noticing all his weapons and equipment were gone, before an unfamiliar voice spoke.

"I wouldn't try it mate…"

Whipping around to face the new speaker, he saw another man sat near him, dressed in a battered set of police riot gear, his helmet gone, exposing cropped black hair and dark skin, whilist his complexion was rugged and tired looking.

"After they knock you about its best not to overstrain yourself." He added. "I tried that and almost vomited from the concussion."

Mark nodded slowly, wincing slightly at a tiny stab of pain.

"And you are?"

The police officer smiled.

"Jacob Lake. I would shake your hand but…" he said, nodding towards his hands, which Mark noticed, with a slight tinge of fear, were securely handcuffed behind him.

"Who…?" he began.

"Same bastards who got you." Jacob said with a tired smile. "They thought it was funny to lock me up with my own cuffs."

"And they are?"

"Thugs and marauders…" came another voice, and a new figure walked toward them and sat down, this one a burly soldier in pristine uniform, his shaven head contrasting with a firm but warm expression.

"Major Nick Farrow." He said briskly, nodding at Mark.

"I'm er… Mark Blaine. What were you saying about those thugs back there?"

The major grimaced.

"They're lowlifes Mr Blaine. They seem to have set themselves up in this store and are even now kidnapping innocent people for God knows what."

"Wait, what? We just came here…"

"We?" the major said with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah…" Mark began, before stopping himself.

"It's fine." Jacob said with an encouraging smile. "It's not like we're going to hurt you…We're all in the same boat."

Mark nodded.

"Ok there's five of , my best mate and his sister, a girl we picked up leaving London and an old Gurkha. We came here for supplies and well… Have you seen any of them?"

"Well they seem to have separated us into men and women." Jacob replied. "As for your friend I think he might be over there. Michael's keeping him comfortable; he seems to have been worse off than you when those punks threw him in."

Frantically Mark looked past the two other men, to the other side of the room, which he guessed to be an old storeroom, to where Chris was lying, a young man in a black shirt and jeans with a shock of bright orange hair sitting by him, who smiled at Mark.

"Yeah the Yanks alright Mr Blaine, don't you worry yourself." The major said. "Man of God after all…"

"So what happened here? Was that your camp out there?" Mark said after a second, and the major nodded.

"It was… My unit, part of the 2nd Battalion of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment, was deployed around this area to try and deal with the outbreak and establish a safe zone. As you probably saw, we failed miserably."

"Got that right." Jacob said with a wry grin, but the major only frowned before continuing.

"Problem is, I started with about four hundred men and soon was down to about twenty by the end of the 'safe zone'. Captain Jones took about fifty up to try and deal with rioting in the local village. None of them returned. Then Southern Command in Southampton demanded we send half our force to help the evacuation. I mean, for the first few days I was losing more men to command than to the bloody walkers! Then things got bad…" he said with a grim frown. "So many refugees were streaming in from London on the way to Southampton that we just couldn't cope. The roadblocks on the motorway were soon getting overrun with people, trying to escape the walkers and it was all my boys could do to try and keep them from going wild. I had to pull in every police officer and reservist in the area, give them a gun and put them out on the motorway to keep things sane!"

At this point Jacob took over.

"Before all this I had never even fired a gun. Next thing I know I'm wielding an assault rifle and screening people for bites and wounds! The entire local force was out there or at the quarantine camp giving out supplies and medical care."

"Were there any walkers then?" Mark asked.

"Not at first." The major answered. "There was the odd one near the perimeter at the edge of the motorway but the snipers were quick to take them out. The real problem was all the bastards hiding bites from us. I mean, it's hard enough to screen someone for infection when wearing a full NBC suit and gas mask, without every single person going crazy about their rights and liberties. We're in a bloody war for Christ's sake! Truth be told, it was those refugees who doomed us in the first place. All it took was one of them to turn at the wrong moment and we could lose almost five men before we put a round through the bastard's head. I lost ten men one day to those 'sleeper agents' as Command so eloquently called them. And then, as the number of infected refugees kept growing, we finally started getting walkers coming at us for real. There would be whole packs of them, undead families that looked like they had walked all the way from London. A lot of them were burnt and charred, like melted action figures almost, the ones that must have been in Basingstoke when it got firebombed. We just kept losing so many men, and soon we just had to abandon most of the blockades, just leave the vehicles and barricades where they were because we were trying to save fuel for the generators when the power went out. That's when the desertions started to happen."

The major's face was solemn as he continued.

"Can't blame them really. A lot of them had families still at Woolwich Barracks and the word from London wasn't good. The whole city had gone into lockdown, martial law and bodies piling up in the streets…"

"I still remember the pictures on the news." Jacob added. "Soldiers in gas masks in deserted streets, smoke on the horizon… The Houses of Parliament was like a bloody fortress!"

Mark felt his blood chill as Jacob described the state of the world outside to him. Somehow he had expected the walkers to be destroyed soon, not topple the whole country.

"With all the desertions I was just down to a few loyal troops and a handful of police." The major explained. "There weren't enough of us to protect the civilians or fight off the walkers so I sent Lieutenant Parks with most of the lorries up towards Southampton. I thought they would be safer there…"

Mark sighed.

"I'm sorry major but, we just came from Southampton and well, it was a bloodbath…"

The major nodded.

"I guess we already knew that by then but it was better to have some sort of hope of getting away than just sitting here waiting for the walkers to overrun us. We were already running out of ammo and supplies when they came through…"

"Who?" Mark said softly, noticing the major's face redden with anger as he continued.

"The thugs who beat us all up and threw us in here. I don't know who they are; I think they're from the estate out behind the supermarket. Anyway they came a few nights ago, cut the throats of the sentries and tied up most of us…They killed anybody who resisted, and a lot who didn't .They executed five of my boys and two of the policemen as well, and I don't know how many civilians. I still remember their leader, couldn't see his face under their mask, arrogant little bastard, taking my sidearm off me after his mates beat me up with baseball bats, then casually shooting one of the civilians with a girly little giggle, just because, in his muffled words, he wanted to 'check the gun worked'. I've never seen something like that before, even the Taliban seemed to have some sort of morals, however messed up. Those men…pure evil." He stated bluntly.

Mark looked into the major's eyes, hoping to see some sort of restraint in the man's eyes, a feeling that those men out there weren't actually as evil as he had said they were. He saw none. Thats when he became really scared.

"So what's your story then?" said the vicar, in a distinctive American accent, slightly nasal and high pitched.

"Not much to say really…" Mark said with a slight grin. "Former computer repairman, me and Chris, the guy over there, used to go around in a van in London. One of our callouts, it was some old guy, dying it turned out, dead in a minute. A few days later, I'm chilling at home, playing a bit of Battlefield…" he added with a grin. "When I hear on the radio there's shit going down nearby. I pick up Chris and his sister; we make a detour by a friend's house and almost get eaten by said friend and are saved from a gang of thugs by the military. To cut a long story short, we end up in Southampton; narrowly escape being bombed to pieces by the RAF and end up here…"

"Wow pretty crazy." The American, Michael said, by now sat next to them, Chris evidently not in as bad a state as Mark had feared.

"Wait a second." Mark said as he spotted a smudged white dog collar on the young man's shirt. "What's an American vicar doing in a Sainsbury's in the middle of nowhere? No offence of course…" he added.

"None taken." Michael said with a laugh. "I'm originally from California. I ended up wandering across the country, church to church, a lay preacher sort of thing, until I reached Florida and Georgia on the East Coast. I was on one of the last planes out from Atlanta before shit went down and the no fly zone was put up. I was off to work at a chapel in a little village near Southampton and I hadn't really been reading the news so the whole 'end of the world' hadn't really struck me yet…"

As if to prove his point he reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled newspaper front page, which Mark took from him.

"The Atlanta Herald." Mark read. "Police officer shot? That must have been a slow news day… "

The vicar grinned.

"Yeah, I never did get to that village in the end. I got out of London after I heard about what happened at Hyde Park. I hitched a ride with a businesswoman heading south. Aafia Iqbal her name is; shes probably somewhere in this building with the girls from your group…"

"Wait…what is going on…" Mark heard a voice from across the room saying, and he looked over to see Chris, awake finally, and slowly coming to his senses. He was about to go check and see if his friend was alright when the door was flung open and light spilled into the room from outside.

Before any of the prisoners could move, three men in leather jackets and scavenged riot gear and body armour stormed in, guns at their hips and slung over their shoulders, balaclavas covering their faces.

"Alright, you lot, with us now!" bellowed the leader, a fat man with a heavy assault rifle slung over his shoulder and a machete in hand, his voice muffled slightly by his mask.

"Fuck you…" Mark said defiantly, not wishing to be pushed around by petty thugs like these.

"Shut it faggot!" shouted the man to the leader's right, a West Ham scarf tied around his face and a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. "Anyways, we're all tired out after doing exactly that to those lovely ladies next door…" he added with a muffled laugh.

Instantly Mark, with a rush of adrenaline clouding his better judgement, staggered to his feet and started towards the three men.

With another laugh, the thug in the sunglasses drew a short metal rod from his belt and with a flick of his hand extended it into a steel baton, which he roughly slammed into Mark's leg, causing him to fall to the floor with a strangled cry of pain.

"Enough games dickwads." The leader said bluntly. "You're coming with us, whether you like it or not."

* * *

Trying to ignore the pain in both his head and his leg, Mark barely noticed them being forced out of the storeroom and shoved along the corridor by the armed men. It was only when they emerged through a door onto the shop floor itself that Mark took in his surroundings with a sense of horror.

The supermarket main floor was huge, a vast expanse that must have been the size of a football pitch, filled with empty shelves and ransacked crates and cardboard boxes, all empty.

"Well the supplies idea wasn't a great one then…" Mark heard Chris saying, but he barely heard him as he saw the horror above them.

Dangling from the ceiling far above on thick knotted ropes hung at least two dozen bodies. Many were missing heads and limbs or covered in thick patches of dried blood. A significant majority, Mark noticed with a gasp of revulsion, were wearing police uniforms or military fatigues, and also one more fact, which genuinely brought tears to Mark's eyes, was that at least four or five of the corpses were small and dressed in children's clothing, bright shirts and flower printed dresses, as if they were going to some birthday party at a friend's house.

"You monsters…" Jacob said softly, the rage behind his words like a white hot flame of anger, but the thug next to him only laughed and prodded him with the end of his rifle.

"Impressive isn't it? It was the boss's idea you know. Stopped the bastards from crying and protesting so much. If you ask me those soldier boys were asking for it anyway…" he added with another deep laugh, casting a glance at the major, whose expression was a pale mask of fury as they were led further onto the shop floor.

It was when they passed underneath one of the gruesome corpses that it suddenly moved, snarling and futilely reaching down toward them, causing everybody except the major and their still chuckling captors to flinch back.

"Aww now they're all riled up…" one of the bandits said with mock disappointment. "I was hoping we could set them all off when the time came…" he added mysteriously and Mark had to stop himself from vomiting. Never before had he experienced such complete and irredeemable evil in people before. Even those thugs that had killed Lauren hadn't been this level of horror. Eliza had actually said to him on the way back from Southampton that their leader, Sunil Singh, could have been a nice person before the outbreak, and that it might have just caused him to snap.

These men though. They were monsters.

They turned a corner to what appeared to be the centre of the room, bordered on all sides by empty shelves and currently occupied by Eliza, Lexi and an Asian woman in a slightly faded business suit and red hijab headdress that Mark assumed to be the woman Aafia that Michael had mentioned.

"Holy shit…" she said softly as the men staggered over, Michael giving her a cheery smile despite the horror all around them. "They said they had killed you. We thought we were going to die…or worse…"

As the two groups were pushed together and greeted one another with tears and embraces, Mark stood slightly out from them, looking up at the store around.

A second floor ran around the edges of the room, seeming to transform it into a weird arena, complete with at least a dozen masked men with guns watching from above like spectators at a sports event. He was just giving the finger defiantly to the guffawing men above, whilst their former escorts had already disappeared, when the speaker system came on with an inappropriately cheery jingle, quickly followed by an even happier voice of a young woman, which seemed ridiculously out of place.

"Hello there patrons of my new abode…" she said with a high pitched giggle. "Sorry to keep you waiting but we needed to make some preparations for our little event today."

As this was said a new figure walked out onto the balcony overhead, obviously the speaker, a short young woman with flowing blonde hair dressed in a bright blue blazer and skirt, her face set in a childish grin.

"Now, we know you may be scared and frankly, why wouldn't you be? But don't worry; it'll all be over soon enough."

Instantly the businesswoman Aafia stepped forward, pointing straight at the newcomer.

"Look you …" she snapped, but was cut off by the other woman, who only grinned and said softly.

"Tut tut madam, let me finish before you ask anything… Of course, how rude of me not to introduce myself. I am Miss Amanda Marvalo, Miss Marvalo to you, master of ceremonies for our main show tonight."

As Miss Marvalo finished speaking, her voice on the speakers crackling out, the major stepped forward confidently, looking up at the woman.

"Look you pyscho bitch. You really think you can imprison people like this. This country has not collapsed overnight. When we get out of this place I will bring down the wrath of Her Majesty's Finest upon your sick little arena, and bury you and these murdering bastards under…"

As he raised his voice even louder, ready to finish his tirade a single gunshot rang out, echoing over the vast space, and the major stopped mid-sentence and fell to the floor, a bullet in his brain. Mark's eyes widened as he saw the woman casually blow a slight puff of smoke from the end of the pistol in her hand.

"Naughty…" she scolded with a giggle. "I will not…"

"What is this?" Chris suddenly roared, and Mark expected another shot to ring out.

It never came.

But he noticed the announcer, Miss Marvalo as she called herself, suddenly turn much angrier, her cheery expression replaced by a mask of pure rage.

"You will listen to me!" she screamed and, as the captives below were silenced, she smiled and giggled again, as if nothing had happened.

It was then that they all heard the piercing wail of an alarm outside.

"Goody!" Marvalo laughed, clapping her hands together in childish glee. "Now, let me just explain this little arrangement to you…" she said softly. "You will all die here, no question of it, and yet, the longer you survive, the happier I will be for you!" she added, as if that was the best thing in the world.

Mark felt his blood chill at those words. He couldn't see anyway to escape, they had no weapons, and some crazy woman was telling them what to do. He could already see Jacob shaking his head slowly, Chris dumfounded and Aafia just sitting and rocking back and forth with a blank expression on her face. Lexi's sobs came from nearby, where Eliza clutched her close.

And, as if to prove that they were well and truly done for, the moans of dozens of walkers started to come from the direction of the main doors and the alarm shut off.

"New customers!" Marvalo proclaimed with another high pitched laugh over the speakers, and the hiss of the automatic doors filled the air, along with the snarls and growls of the approaching undead.

"We are well and truly fucked aren't we…?" Jacob said from next to him, but Mark barely heard him, only watched the laughing master of ceremonies above.

Accepting a sleek hunting rifle from a thug next to her, Marvalo aimed it to the ceiling and fired off a single shot which echoed overhead and shouted over the moans of the walkers shambling closer.

"Let the games begin!"


	18. Chapter 18- Making Life Taste Better

Let the games begin.

For a second Mark could barely move, those words echoing in his head as he watched the shambling horde a hundred metres away, shoving each other aside in their haste to get at the humans before them.

"Fuck we need to run man!" Chris bellowed and practically manhandled Mark away, the others already sprinting through the ransacked remains of the frozen foods section.

It was only when a shot rang out and a nearby mouldy box of chilled pizza was split in two by a bullet that Mark was brought back to his senses.

"Keep running!" came the voice of Marvalo over the speakers, after the annoying jingle rang out, and the woman laughed.

"What the fuck are we going to do?" Jacob was saying from up ahead, trying to stay upright with both his hands cuffed, frantically watching the thugs above as they laughed and jeered.

"Up ahead take a left!" Aafia said calmly, as she now appeared to be at the head of the group.

Following her orders, Mark and the others turned sharply left into another aisle, trashed freezer units and melt water littering the floor.

As Mark ran forward he slipped on the stagnant water and went down hard, landing in a heap and knocking over Michael, who staggered but managed to keep his balance.

"Whoa you alright man?" Michael panted, hauling Mark up as the snarls of walkers began to come closer.

"Fine mate fine…" Mark muttered as they ran again.

"How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?"

"Beats me, I mean we could…"

They were interrupted as a moaning walker suddenly appeared around the next corner, dressed in a stained police uniform.

Without a second thought Mark punched it in the side of the head and, as it simply ignored the blow, kicked it to the floor.

"Let me." Jacob said casually before stamping on its face repeatedly, his heavy duty boots covered in crimson.

A chorus of boos and jeers echoed from above as Mark grabbed Jacob to steady him, the burly police officer almost falling as he was barely able to keep his balance.

"Keep moving!" Eliza ordered from up ahead as they sprinted down a central aisle littered with flattened cardboard and empty boxes.

By now the snarls of the undead were all around them, and two more came at a stumbling jog towards the huddled survivors, snarling and baring broken teeth.

"Take them down!" Jacob roared, and Chris and Aafia instantly burst forward, sending the undead tumbling with flurries of kicks and punches, before Jacob and Mark stamped on the still moaning walker's heads, their heavy duty boots making short work of the necrotic flesh.

Sweating and breathing heavily, Mark and the others felt a slight sense of triumph. They weren't going to let those thugs above them scare them into submission. Then the speaker jingle tinkled out again and Marvalo spoke once more.

"Boring! Step up the play here my little friends! Or face the punishment…" she added darkly.

No sooner had she said that than more walkers were falling over each other as they staggered at Mark and the other survivors.

"And now we have our own home-grown talent!" Marvalo giggled. "Let me introduce you, ladies and gentlemen, to the residents of quarantine camp Delta! Give them a big hand my friends! They're just dying to meet you…" she added with another delighted laugh.

"Shit I knew some of these people…" Jacob said softly as they backed away from the walkers, who were dressed in a variety of military and police uniforms, as well as the torn coats and casual clothes of the refugees.

"Ok, we should cut around to the right." Aafia said in a low whisper, the walkers only twenty metres away. "We just need to find the meat counter or something, get some knives or cleavers to take out these undead…"

"Then what?" Lexi snapped but the reply was lost as, yet again, Marvalo's commentary came on.

"Time for some action people! The audience are getting bored! The last lot really knew how to party. I mean, most of them are standing before you! But anyway, I think we need to kick off the next stage of this little game with a bang!"

And, to illustrate her point, three blue canisters were hurled from the nearest balcony, to land by the shocked survivors.

"Flashba…!" Jacob began, but Mark didn't hear the rest as the police stun grenades detonated, filling his vision with white and forcing him to his knees.

Shakily standing up, he grabbed Chris, who was ready to vomit, the others barely coming to as he made to step out of the white cloud obscuring his vision.

The next thing he knew there was a cold hand grabbing his arm and, without even knowing what he was doing, and with a roar he would never have thought possible, Mark simply clamped his other hand around the walker's and ,with another shout, pulled. With a sickening crack, he felt the arm give way and found himself with a grey fleshed arm in his hand, still clamped to his other arm.

Pulling it off, Mark was barely able to stop the walker as it came at him again; gnashing its teeth inches from his face before he, surging with adrenaline and rage, rammed the shard of bone protruding from the walker's arm straight into its eye socket and the monster fell with a strangled growl.

Feeling another hand on his arm, Mark steeled himself, knowing that burst of adrenaline wouldn't save him this time but instead felt a small hand slap him in the cheek, and a familiar sarcastic voice say softly.

"Alright cool it man, no need to Hulk out on me…"

Blinking away the white spots in his vision, Mark jogged toward the others, who were already stumbling away from the undead.

Looking back, he saw the walkers still snarling at them. But then, with a crunch of breaking bone and burst of blood, one of the walkers at the back fell, a flash of metal briefly visible jammed into its skull.

"What the…" he said slowly as Lexi dragged him away.

The next thing he knew, another figure emerged from amongst the walkers, scattering them with slashes from a glinting steel machete.

"Ah shit." Lexi whispered as they began to run, the new figure, the same thug in the West Ham scarf and sunglasses, stalked towards them, his machete dripping crimson.

"Introducing a new player!" Marvalo screeched. "Mr Ray Williams, take a bow."

The thug dipped his head, earning cheers and whopping shouts from above.

Taking his chance as the thug bowed once again to his audience, Mark stepped forward and kicked the man straight in the face, then finished with a devastating strike to the groin. As he crumpled to the floor with a whine and roar of rage, Ray was then stamped on by Lexi, who Mark quickly pulled away as boos and jeers from above rained down.

Reaching the rest of the group, Mark practically fell into Chris and Michael, both of them helping him back to his feet.

"Look…" Michael said, taking deep breaths and clutching a nearby shelf for support. "We can't go on like this…"

As if to accentuate his point, a shot rang out, then more from above and the group ran, bullets slamming all around them.

Looking back as they ran, to the balconies above, Mark saw half a dozen men jumping down into the aisles below, all manner of bladed weapons and guns clamped in their hands.

"The hunt is on!" bellowed a thug from above, moments before he leapt down into a nearby aisle, a heavy bolt action rifle in hand.

"Shit shit shit…" Eliza was saying up ahead and Mark couldn't help but agree with her. It looked like they weren't going to get out of this alive.

They ran into another aisle, a few bullets whizzing overhead.

But no sooner had the bedraggled group stumbled through yet another trashed aisle than they found themselves confronted with another thug, this one clad in stolen riot gear, complete with helmet, balaclava and shield, wielding a blood-stained machete in his right hand.

"I'm gonna cut you fuckers up, piece by bloody piece…" he said softly in a muffled voice, before lunging forward, barely missing Aafia and Michael, both sent sprawling to the floor.

Advancing upon them, machete raised, the thug suddenly paused, as a walker fell through a collapsed shelf to the man's right and diving for the armoured thug. Completely unfazed, the man slammed his shield straight into the thing's face, cracking its nose and smashing out rotten teeth, then ramming his weapon straight into its open mouth.

"Now your turn preacher man…" he said with a muffled laugh and advanced on Michael, who had barely staggered up from the floor. "What you going to do eh? Pray?"

But, instead of running, the American vicar did the last thing Mark or anybody else would have expected.

He charged.

With a screeching howl, the lanky man ran at the burly thug, catching him off guard and grabbing him around the waist, then propelling them both into the nearby trashed shelves, slamming the armoured man straight down into the twisted metal and shoving him to the ground.

With a weak groan the thug began to raise his machete but Michael simply stepped on his wrist and the blade clattered to the floor, the vicar scooping it up in his right hand as he placed his foot on the fallen man's head and tore off his helmet and balaclava, revealing a scared looking teenager, now humbled in his psychopathic rampage by one Californian preacher.

"The Lord judges…" Michael said slowly as he raised the machete.

"I act." He finished bluntly, and then slammed the blade straight down, cleaving the shocked teen's face in two.

Without another word Michael nodded forwards and the group ran on, Mark grabbing the fallen riot shield from the dead thug's hand and passing it to Michael who gratefully accepted it.

"Much appreciated friend." The vicar said with a grin, a complete contrast to the blank monotone that had preceded the death of the teenage thug seconds before.

"Ok, we got one of them. How we getting out of here?" Eliza said breathlessly. Her only thoughts for the entire ordeal had just been escape and Mark couldn't blame her.

With a wide grin Jacob, still staggering with his bound hands as he ran on, nodded up ahead.

"Staff exit…" he said with a laugh. "Straight shot through there to the car park, I hope."

No sooner had they ran toward the unassuming wooden door, grins all around despite the horror all around them and Marvalo's indignant screeching from above, than that dream of escape was shattered, and a wiry shaven headed thug dressed in a bright red and white Southampton FC football shirt, grinning from ear to ear stepped from behind a stack of unopened boxes of Walkers crisps, Gage's rifle held steady in hand.

"Whoa whoa whoa ladies, back it up…" he said with a laugh, and glanced up at the balconies as approving cheers came from all around and gestured with the rifle at them.

"Down bitches…" he added, clearly enjoying every moment of this, and Mark hated the smug bastard for it.

As the group fell to their knees, Jacob doing it with obvious difficulty, the man continued to grin at them.

"Must say, you've got some taste here. It's a very nice gun, almost a shame I'm gonna have to waste so many bullets killing you little bitches. I had all the unlocks for this thing on Call of Duty you know…" he added with another smirk. "Would have it gold if it weren't for the walkers and those murdering soldiers ruing my fun. Anyways, you guys just couldn't play the game could you? And now you killed one of my mates and emasculated another so I'm not exactly gonna let you go free."

And with that he walked toward them and stopped in front of Michael.

"Heard your little speech back there preacher man. Think you're so clever eh? Think you can just cut up little Phil like that? That boy was such a sweet kid once you know? Was gonna go off to Oxford or something in September…I guess he just snapped when those soldier boys went and murdered his little sister ,and now you go and cut him up eh? Not very Christian?"

By now the thug was right in front of the blank faced vicar, and casually slammed the stock into his face, breaking the man's nose with an audible crack.

"Yeah big man take that!" he roared, striking him again.

The preacher remained silent and the thug only shrugged.

"Well, looks like your first then you little bastard."

Raising the rifle he aimed it at Michael's face and Mark prepared himself for the loud bang and spurt of blood.

Then something completely unexpected happened.

There was a loud boom and the thugs head literally exploded, the corpse slumping straight into Mark's lap, and he shoved it aside as another figure appeared from the now open staff exit, a shotgun in hand, pumping the empty shell out and hurling the gun aside as they stepped forward, half a dozen bottles of spirits dangling around their neck and a heavy kitbag on their back.

"You alright there?" the figure said and laughed softly, and Mark instantly recognised them.

"Gage?" he said and grinned, then added with a frown. "Where the fuck have you been man? It must have been hours!"

The old soldier only laughed as he stepped over the dead thug.

"You were right. That shell did come in handy after all." He laughed and picked up his rifle from the floor, wiping the blood caked on it.

At this point Aafia stepped forward, wincing at the headless corpse.

"Look, its nice and all your friend saved us." She snapped. "But there's still the matter of getting out of here."

As she said this the moans of walkers and sounds of booted feet running toward them came rushing back and Mark quickly grabbed Gage by the arm.

"Got a plan old man?"

Gage grinned.

"I'd like to say that I've got a secret passage or something but it looks like there's only one option…"

"And what might that be?"

The Gurkha grinned.

"Fight our way out."

And with that, pulling Mark's crossbow from where it was strapped to his back and passing it over then handing his rifle to Chris, Gage drew his kukri and took the bottles from around his neck, lighting each one by one and handing them to the assembled survivors.

"Ok, the only option I can see now is getting through the main entrance. I've got all your weapons from one of the back storerooms in my bag so I'll give you them when we get to out. No point wasting them on those stupid thugs out here. I've left the back doors open so those guys up top will be getting some new visitors soon enough… Follow my lead and only use those Molotovs if you need to. That's our group's best alcohol after all." He added with a smile and a sideways glance at Chris.

And with that he was off, Mark following behind with the crossbow clasped firmly in hand and ready to fire, the others all behind them.

The old Gurkha ploughed on, and as a thug with a baseball bat exploded through a toppled shelving unit, stepped to one side and slit the man's throat with one slash of his blade, grabbing the weapon and hurling it away.

"Keep going!" Chris called back, taking the head off a walker stumbling from behind a darkened counter with a single shot, the recoil thudding back into his shoulder with a sharp spike of pain.

"Cheaters!" Marvalo screeched over the speakers. "If you aren't going to play nicely neither will we!"

"Screw you bitch!" Mark called and earned a weak chorus of laughter from behind.

But as he said this there was no response from Marvalo and, as they ran towards the entrance, it seemed they had finally shut her up.

Then there was the crack of a gunshot, and he felt the bullet whizz past, centimetres from him, grazing his shoulder and leaving a crimson line across his shirt.

"Fuck…" he said through gritted teeth as he toppled and Gage pulled him into cover behind an overturned display cabinet, which the entire group seemed to have taken cover behind.

Up above, Mark could just see Marvalo, a hunting rifle in hand, aiming down at them.

"Bitch." Gage said softly as he quickly tore a strip of fabric from his shirt and tied it around Mark's wound. "We'll check that's fine once the crazy lady with the guns finished…"

"Crazy eh?" Marvalo screeched from up above. "Crazy! You would be crazy too if you had seen what I'd seen!" she added, punctuating her last remark with a shot straight at their position, which chipped the thick plastic right next to Chris' head.

"I was a children's entertainer you know?" she continued, firing again and pulling the bolt back with an audible thunk. "Miss Marvalo. Entertainer, clown, showoman."

Another shot.

"Only £20 an hour."

The next shot clipped the display case and landed between Gage's legs.

"I was never in it for the money!"

She pulled back the bolt again with a harsh, brittle laugh, devoid of humour.

"Just wanted to make the little kids laugh you know? Balloon animals, party games, all that stuff and more!"

"We need to move." Chris whispered in Mark's ear, crouching low as he moved next to him.

"She's got one bullet left before she needs to reload." Michael added. "That's a Remington 700 there, five round magazine. We run when she goes to reload and hope those other guys up there don't have guns as well."

Gage nodded.

"Or we run, and give them a little surprise of our own…" he said, nodding at the Molotovs the others still held.

The others quickly nodded, pale faced at what they were about to do, but knowing it was the only way.

"Ok after the last shot we go." Mark ordered, hefting his rifle despite the slight pain in his arm.

Marvalo evidently hadn't heard them, as she now continued her rant.

"I was doing a show here, in the estate out back…Great crowd, all the kids came over, just to give them a break from the soldiers sweeping the place and the dead men on the news… But then, just as I got started, one of the kids says some crazy guy bit him on the way over. Next thing I know the little boys crying everywhere, poor thing. And you know what happened next?"

As she said this she fired her last shot.

"Go!" Gage roared and they all stood up, Marvalo watching in shock from above as she desperately rammed another magazine into her rifle.

The Molotovs flew through the air, the dumbstruck thugs above only beginning to reach for their weapons as the bottles exploded in a roar of flame around them.

Mark raised his crossbow instantly, firing into the gathered men above, one dropping as a bolt exploded into his eye, the others scattering from the rising fire around them.

But, as he lowered the weapon, he saw a new problem had presented itself. Like a giant middle finger from above, five flash bangs fell to the floor right next to the triumphant survivors.

"Oh snap." Mark said softly as his vision filled with white and his ears were torn apart by the ear splitting noise.

And then, through the white smoke by the entrance doors, framed by the rising flames, Mark watched as Marvalo advanced, a double barrelled shotgun in hand and a manic expression on her ash and sweat stained face.

"Surprise!" she laughed and fired, the first shell blowing a hole clean through the display case and scattering the group.

"With me!" Gage bellowed and ran into the shelves beyond as the flames roared toward them.

Mark paused for a second, watching Marvalo raise her shotgun and saying in a low voice.

"My turn."

Mark was already running, the useless rifle clasped in hand, shoving aside a walker stumbling toward him, flames licking around its legs, and almost fell into Gage who was stood by two dead walkers, his kukri reflected in the flames, drenched in blood.

"We…" the old soldier began, but was cut off by the boom of Marvalo's shotgun, and the corner shelf they were sat by disappeared in a blast of plastic and cheap metal.

"Just kids!" came the screech of the magician as she slammed another two shells in her gun. "And next thing I know a squad of soldier boys in gas masks are lining them up by a wall and putting bullets in them! 'Acceptable losses' their commander said as he put a bullet through a little girl's forehead!"

Gage and Mark stumbled away, the Gurkha casually slicing the neck of a thug with a baseball bat who barrelled into them, shoving the corpse aside and running on as Marvalo sprinted after them, appearing at the end of the aisle, shotgun raised to her shoulder.

"You know who that child killing bastard was?"

She fired again, Mark feeling the pellets whizz past them.

"Your old friend Major he was a good guy eh? Thought he was gonna help you out did you? Well you missed him stringing people up on lampposts as we all watched! Missed the firing squads and solders bursting into houses and shooting the place up for no reason!"

The next shot was high, but Mark knew they would have to somehow take this pyscho down once and for all as they kept running, the others just in front, trying to avoid the fire spreading around them, and the walkers stumbling through the flames at them.

"I have an…idea." Gage panted as they sprinted past a group of walkers feeding on a dead thug lying in a pool of blood and entrails.

Mark just nodded. Anything to get them away from this horrific place.

Without another word Gage sprinted to the head of the group and said, breathlessly, ignoring the screams echoing around them.

"Ok, we can still get to the entrance and outside to the Land Rover but this next bits gonna be hard. We're going to have to put ourselves in that witches line of fire."

The rest of the group looked on blankly, taking in every word.

"We need to climb up on these shelves and run across. It's the only way to reach the door with all the fire and walkers everywhere…"

And with that the Gurkha jumped onto the thin metal shelves, balancing himself just and running across and was lost in the smoke.

"Might need a leg up." Jacob laughed awkwardly and Mark and Chris grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him up, shuffling as fast as they could, expecting Marvalo to put a shell through their backs at any point. And yet nothing came as they practically shoved Jacob down onto the floor below, both awkwardly jumping off and picking themselves up, the entrance tantalisingly close now.

Taking one look back at the burning supermarket byond, Mark turned and ran after Chris.

Rolling into the tarmac in the cool evening air outside, Mark could almost forget that they weren't out of the woods yet.

And, as he watched the flames licking out of the wrecked Sainsbury's beyond, Mark felt his blood chill.

A lone figure staggered out of the flames, covered in soot and ash, almost unrecognisable beneath horrific red burns and scar tissue, but he would have recognised them anywhere after the torture they had put them through.

Marvalo.

Her blonde hair was singed and had fallen off in clumps, whilst her youthful and pretty face was now a wretched mask of burns, but the shotgun in her blackened hands was still pointed at them.

Mark wasn't scared of her now though and calmly walked forward, taking the machete off Michael as he stalked towards her.

"The greatest show of my life…" she babbled as Mark grabbed the gun off her and hurled it aside, then placed the machete blade against her neck.

"I should cut your head off for what you did bitch." He whispered in her ear. "But I think your former contestants would rather do it…" he added, then reached into her ragged blazer and found a box of shotgun shells and a small set of handcuff keys.

Glancing up at the advancing dead spilling out, burning, from the devastated store beyond, Mark ran back to the others gathered by the parked Land Rover nervously watching the undead beyond, ready to move. Marvalo was screaming as the undead advanced on her but he ignored it, casually throwing the keys to Lexi, who quickly unlocked Jacob's cuffs as Chris gave him a confused look.

"What was that about man?" he said, looking suspiciously at him, but Mark only laughed awkwardly.

"Just asking her where the handcuff keys were…Anyway we need to get out of here, do we have a another car for these guys?"

Chris nodded and was about to answer when a silver BMW in police colours screamed up to them, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

"Get in boys…" Aafia ordered, leaning out the side and beckoning to the others as Mark and Chris ran to the Land Rover as Gage started it up, Jacob, Michael and Eliza piling into the other car.

"Follow our lead!" Lexi shouted out the back as Gage threw her his rifle and a set of spare magazines.

As the Land rover sped across the car park and Chris began grabbing their weapons from Gage's kitbag, Mark looked out the back.

"Shit we've got company…"

Spilling out of a side entrance Mark picked out five survivors of Marvalo's band; clutching weapons as they piled into a black police Land Rover, turning on the lights and sirens as they gave chase.

Grabbing a pistol from the weapons pile Mark flicked off the safety.

"Hang on people!" Gage ordered from up front as he sent the Land Rover screeching around a trashed machine gun post and towards the empty form of the car wash, where the horde Mark had seen earlier now gathered.

"Ok, we're going straight through…" Gage said bluntly and sent the car roaring toward the horde gathered in the car wash.

"What the…" Chris began but Gage only said calmly.

"Just trust me. Are the others following?"

"The good guys or the bad guys?" Lexi shouted back.

Mark looked out and saw the silver BMW the other had found keeping right on their tail, Aafia gripping the wheel whilst Michael and Jacob hung on for dear life. The black Land Rover however was taking a turn towards the empty car park to the left of the car wash. Then he saw the thug leaning out of the front window with an AK-47 in hand.

"Shit step on it!" he screamed as a volley of bullets slammed into the side of the truck and Gage sent the Land Rover at speed straight into the car wash, sending walkers slamming into the glass walls in little splashes of blood and brain matter.

As they roared out of the car wash Mark watched the others exploding out behind, the bonnet painted in blood. But then he watched the thug's car roaring toward them until, with two deafening bangs, the vehicle careered to a halt, its front tyres blown out.

"Police spike strips…" Gage explained softly as the thugs spilled out of their vehicle.

The five men however didn't look towards the survivor's vehicles, instead watching in horror as the walkers approached them, firing their assault rifles straight into the horde to little effect.

Gage quickly sent the Land Rover rumbling away, and Mark tried not to listen to the screams of the last members of Marvalo's gang being torn apart.

As they drove down the sloping embankment through a mass of barbed wire and onto the motorway, Mark took one last look back at the burning Sainsbury's, the fire now consuming the fake marble faced outside and sending smoke drifting into the dying light beyond.

"Next stop London…" he said softly as they drove off into the sunset.


	19. Chapter 19- London's Burning

"London?" Chris asked, incredulously.

"We just came from there; it's not going to be any better now. What are you expecting? That the military have come to save our arses?" Chris asked Mark.

"I don't fucking know! What would you have us do?! Unless you have a better plan I suggest you shut the fuck up!" Mark yelled.

"Things will have just gotten worse in London. We go there, we're dead." Chris said.

"We're already as good as dead." Mark stated.

"Is this still about your family? Look, I'm sorry you lost your son. It must be terrible, but martyring yourself and the rest of us by dragging us all back into that hellhole isn't going to help. You can't get revenge, you can't set the world straight, there is no cure and humanity has crumbled in a matter of days. This is no longer about living. It's about being alive. We survive now, we get by, do what's best for everyone. Nothing else matters, and none of it will matter again." Chris said.

"What do we do then?" Mark asked, defeated.

"We live with ourselves and I say we make a pass around the outside of London and find a place to hold up well away if it looks bad." Chris said. Lexi nodded in agreement

"I agree. There's no use in taking additional risks. Death's shadow seems to follow us everywhere." Gage added as he wtahced the silent road ahead.

"Fine. You and your goddamned thinking." Mark joked.

Chris laughed.

"You'd rather I stopped?" He asked Mark.

"Hell no. I just hate it when you're right." Mark said with a slight smile.

"Pull over. We need to tell Aafia. They need to know what we're doing." Chris told Gage. Gage pulled over. Chris and Mark got out and drew their weapons on their surroundings; it looked quiet, for now. Lexi stayed in the car with Gage. Aafia stopped the car and Eliza got out.

"What's going on?" She asked Chris, raising an eyebrow.

"We've had a change of plans. We're skirting around the outside of London, seeing if anything's gotten even worse and setting up camp further away. At least for now." Chris said.

"Ok. I'll tell the others." Eliza said, getting back into the car.

* * *

They neared London after several hours of driving in complete silence. Everyone just wanted to reflect on things, what they'd just experienced and everything else that had happened. At least, that's what Chris did. His thoughts were getting darker and darker by the day, and he didn't like it. Sleeping was impossible, the nightmares had just returned. And waking up wasn't much better; the world was a living nightmare now. Sometimes Chris didn't know why he hadn't taken his own life, or why he still felt like he was going to continue living, even though he had very little left to live for.

"What's that?" Lexi asked as they approached London on the empty motorway, as an orange glow from the horizon filled their view.

"I don't know, but I don't like it" Chris said.

Lexi looked frightened and cuddled into him, he didn't know why, but it seemed as though Lexi felt safe around Chris. Maybe it was for lack of a father figure, she was still quite young, and with everything happening now, she could well have regressed to a greater state of dependence on others and immaturity. Chris wouldn't have blamed her.

"Holy fuck." Mark said, nearly speechless.

Chris looked up from out of Lexi's long black hair and through the window to see London set ablaze, the silhouettes of helicopters over the dying city visible through the climbing tongues of smoke and flame. He could practically hear the screams from the Land Rover. It certainly felt like it. Gage took the car down a turning that took them away from the city, past lane upon lane of stalled traffic, causing them to have to drive down the empty hard shoulder past abandoned emergency vehicles and roadblocks all silent except for the shadow of a few walkers stumbling along. Gage didn't say a word, gazing solemnly into the distance.

"Looks like you were right." Mark said.

After driving for several more hours, they found an isolated petrol station crammed with stalled cars, with a small side building that had already been barricaded. The silence throughout the journey had almost been deafening, but it didn't come as a surprise after seeing everything you once knew burn on the horizon. Chris got out and, holding his pistol in both hands, walked up to the front door.

"I'll take point." Chris said, almost surprised at hearing his own voice again.

"I'll cover you, mate." Mark said.

Aafia and the others were behind them quietly arranging equipment and supplies with Gage and Lexi, with Jacob keeping watch with Marvalo's shotgun in hand.

Chris looked back. "Fuck that shit, let's do the fun part." He said with a grin at Mark. His friend smiled back and opened the door slowly. Chris counted four walkers. Mark went back to grab his crossbow, they didn't want to attract attention from any other walkers in the rooms. He fired and downed three of them slowly, the other walkers took no notice, facing the other way and being either oblivious or apathetic to the fact that their peers had crossbow bolts inserted through their brains. Chris was surprised at how well Mark handled his crossbow; he hadn't had it long yet he was practically a master now, he blamed those long hours the two had spent on the Xbox together.

Chris took the last one, grabbing a thick piece of metal pipe he found and knocking the walker over with it and then stomped on its head with his boot. The walker's skull was resilient, but shattered all the same and Chris slipped on the mixture of blood and brain matter that now covered the floor and collided with the hard stone floor with great force and grimaced. As he stood, he heard a piece of skull crack under his foot, he was breathing heavily. Mark looked at him, worried.

"You ok?" Mark asked.

"Yeah. I just needed something to take all this out on. Besides I'd seen it done in a video game, I was curious to see if it worked." Chris laughed.

"Obviously not." Mark joked as he helped him up.

* * *

Chris and Mark swept through the other rooms, not encountering any other walkers, but piecing together what this place really was as they went. It was a small and improvised military checkpoint being used to evacuate civilians as the city burned. Obviously someone had been bitten somewhere down the line and they had left in a hurry. There were mattresses and makeshift beds on the floors in the rooms along with a few, unfortunately empty, military crates. Chris and Mark dragged the bodies from the corridor and left them propped up by the cars outside. Chris mopped up the blood and gore that had been splashed across the floor with products he'd found in a small closet while Mark retrieved his crossbow bolts with sickening cracks as he pulled them from the walker's skulls. Chris went back to tell the others, who looked up as he approached. Michael was knelt down, praying frantically, he must have been even more shaken than the others at the sight of London literally burning down before his eyes. The others seemed distressed by Michael's breakdown; Eliza was holding Lexi close and Chris could see a fear in Eliza's eyes too. Chris put his hand on Michael's shoulder.

"Calm down, you're stressing out the others." Chris said, softly.

Michael looked up at him; his eyes were bloodshot from the tears still running down his face.

"No one interrupts me when I'm talking to the Lord." He said, flatly as he took to his feet.

"I'm sorry, but can you do it later? We need to get inside. It's safe there." Chris apologised hoping the preacher hadn't snapped from a combination of the apocalyptic city before him,and the horrific fight in the Sainsbury's against Marvalo's thugs.

"Nowhere is safe unless God allows it! You are not God! You cannot keep us safe!" Michael yelled, as he ran at Chris and knocked him into the side of a police car. Michael put his hands around Chris' throat and started to strangle him,all the whoel baring his teeth in pure rage. Chris flailed and tried to use his weight to throw Michael off, but the preacher was much stronger than he looked. Chris felt himself weaken as he used up what little oxygen he had left. Michael hesitated suddenly as he saw Jacob and Gage rush over run over, guns drawn, took his hands away from Chris and got off of him as Jacob grabbed him gently but firmly. He looked at his hands, horrified.

"What have I…?" he began slowly in a tearful voice.

Mark ran at Michael to throw a punch, having only just seen what was happening. Chris got to his feet and grabbed Mark, holding his friend back. Michael's horror at the world he was in was too much for him and he broke down into tears again in Jacob's arms. Chris told the others about the shelter and they piled in for the night with excited cheers.

"It feels like I haven't slept on a mattress in years!" Lexi said, happily as she flopped onto one of the makeshift beds. Gage and Mark moved the empty vending machine that was in the room to block the door shut for the night, just to be sure. As they all lay in their beds, Chris rubbed the purple marks around his throat that were still very painful.

Jacob appeared from the side door, a heavy object wrapped in cloth in his hands.

"What the…" Mark began, and Chris saw his friends eyes widen as the former police officer drew a heavy green and black assault rifle from it.

"L85A2." The officer said with a wide grin as he sat down on his mattress and ran his hand over the weapon. "Found it tucked away behind one of the shop counters."

"Holy shit man let's have a go!" Mark said, grinning like an excited schoolboy.

Jacob smiled.

"Maybe tomorrow we'll get some cans lined up and do a little competition, take our mind off things..." Gage suggested as he crouched on his bed, sharpening his kukri slowly and methodically.

As the others quickly descended into idle chat about who was the best shot, Chris heard Lexi cuddle up to Eliza and as she ran her fingers through Lexi's black hair, he heard Lexi ask.

"What are we going to do now?" She was still shaken from seeing Chris attacked by Michael on top of everything else. Perhaps more so than Chris himself had been.

"I don't know, babe. But we'll all look out for each other, and I suppose that's one hell of a lot better than having any kind of plan." Eliza said.

Chris found himself reflecting on those words and he began to wonder if he could live up to the expectations his sister and Lexi had for him, if he could keep them safe. He decided that he would always make sure that he could, whatever the cost.

* * *

**A/N So there's the edning to our little fic,hope you all enjoyed it! Of course we're not leaving it there and the sequel will start to be written and published over summer,but for now this is it,as both me and my co-author Spaceman727 want to pursue other projects and feel this is a good conclusion to this part of the story. But of course we will still very much appreciate any reviews and feedback,or just questions about the story itself. And,until the summer when we continue this, we just want to thank you for reading this. Peace! -Pollardinator feat Spaceman727**


	20. Chapter 20- Woke up this Morning

As Chris, Mark and the rest of their ragtag band settled in for the night, all their hopes and fears forgotten for one brief moment, in the burning city beyond, an old enemy was completing his night time activities.

In a deserted London street on the city outskirts, only a mile away from the petrol station Chris and the others were holed up in, a green and black camouflaged Mastiff armoured vehicle, stolen from an abandoned army checkpoint, came screaming to a halt. As soon as the heavy truck, bumper stained crimson with walker blood, stopped, instantly a gaggle of ragged walkers came stumbling from the empty shopfronts, arms outstretched.

The necrotic figures were within metres of the vehicle when the two front doors were flung open and three men leapt out, the leader, dressed in an immaculate grey suit and overcoat, casually hefting a baseball bat whilst the other two, outfitted in hooded tops and military body armour, aimed supressed MP5 sub-machine guns at the incoming undead.

"I've got this boys…" the leader, Sunil Singh, the same man who had murdered a young woman in front of her lover for little more than a bit of resistance to him kidnapping her, said firmly, and gripping the bat in both hands, started forward.

He swung the weapon, caving in the skull of the first walker in one blow, and then bringing the metal bat crashing on top of the next, a teenager with half its face missing, before three more stumbled toward him, yellowed teeth bared.

Sunil sighed and glanced back at his men, who were both gripping their weapons tightly in clenched fists, not sharing their leader's calm attitude to the walking corpses.

With a shrug as the nearest walker reached for him he stepped back, threw aside the bat and drew a chrome Desert Eagle handgun from his jacket and shot down all three in a heartbeat, putting a bullet in the forehead of each walking corpse.

Stowing his gun back in his jacket he glanced at his two underlings.

"Shots will bring more of them. We need to work quickly" He declared simply as he grabbed his AK-47 rifle from the front seat of the truck and slammed the door shut. "Bring out the prisoners."

* * *

A minute later and the small group, now including three wide eyed prisoners bound and gagged with thick duct tape, straining at their bonds as they emerged onto the roof a nearby office block, seven stories up.

"Enjoy the view boys!" Sunil declared loudly, spreading his right arm out on the burning city beyond, the other holding a small red can of petrol as he heard the three men shoved to the ground behind him.

Far off in the distance he could just make out the black shapes of RAF jets in the skies overhead, swooping down as they firebombed the city into oblivion. The fire clambered ever higher above the London skyline, consuming whole districts in the firestorm of pitch black smoke and flame. From his lofty position Sunil could see it all, as if God had decided to smite London from above, sweep clean centuries of work in one fell swoop and, as he gazed out, only one expression came to his face.

A smile.

He didn't care what happened to any of it. All the police, soldiers and the government camped across the river at the Westminster Safe Zone could all burn with the walkers as far as he cared. And now, as he prepared to dispose of the prisoners, the crackle of the fires beyond and the stench of burning flesh assaulting his senses, he walked toward the three prisoners arranged in a circle, unscrewing the lid from the petrol can as he began to sing a song he remembered hearing somewhere once, in what felt like another life.

"Woke up this morning…" he began, a grin on his face as the three men before him looked up at him in fear.

"…got myself a gun…" he added, drawing the Desert Eagle from his jacket and casually putting a bullet through the leg of the nearest prisoner, a middle aged man in a ragged blue suit who they had found trying to bring a stash of supplies back to his family across the street.

Sunil had enjoyed the look on that man's face as he threw a grenade through his family's window and heard the desperate screams and sounds of running feet simply disappear in a puff of smoke like a cheap magic trick. Now he was enjoying the man's other expression even more. It was the look of someone who had lost everything and the gangster loved it. He considered doing this sort of thing more often as he continued to sing.

"Mama always said I'd be the chosen one. One in a million…"

As he sang he began to tip the contents of the petrol can all over them. Reaching into his pocket and finding a gold plated lighter, marked with a silver dragon motif that he had taken off some big shot businessman after bashing his fat head in, he paused in singing and crouched down next to the sobbing, petrol stained prisoners.

"You know what the funny thing is?" he said softly to the youngest of them as he looked at the lighter and held it in front of him. The boy couldn't have been more than eighteen, with a mass of long black hair, now drenched in foul smelling petrol.

The boy was already crying by now, a dark stain on the crotch of his ragged jeans.

"Funny thing is…" Sunil said with a jovial grin. "Even if I burn you guys to a cinder, I know you're all coming back, no matter what state you're in."

He laughed.

"Should be a bit of a shock to those soldiers eh? Seeing you three shuffle down the street as if you crawled out of hell itself…"

He stood up and flicked the lighter on then, draining the last of the petrol on the young man's face, threw it down and stepped back as the flames, and the screams, pierced the night.

"You got to burn to shine…" he sang softly as he watched the prisoner's death throes then turned away, a wry grin on his face.

"Born under a bad sign with a blue moon in my eye..." he added as he looked to the outskirts of the burning city, and saw the distant lights from an abandoned petrol station.

"Let's pack it up!" he ordered as one of his thugs threw his AK over and he pulled back the firing pin with a resounding ping.

Glancing at the dark petrol station he laughed, ignoring the howl of the still burning prisoners.

"It's hunting season!"


End file.
